It all started a long, long time ago - originally, people wrote things, sang songs etc. and all was well - people got paid for their work, or performing their songs, and it was all great (honest) - but then, evil people came along (all with capes and thin curly moustaches) with that vile creation of the devil - the printing press.

Things kinda went down hill for a while - and these evil people made vast amounts of money by printing other people’s ideas & stories and selling them for a hansom profit - the creators of these works usually got nothing. And so, from this came the idea of copyright - the creators of works were granted legal ownership of them, and people could not reproduce them without the creators permission - thus 'intellectual property' was born.

For a while - things got better. But then, just when we thought we were safe, the evil people came back (this time they ditched their capes and moustaches and replaced them with suits). Now when they came back, they had a better plan - instead of ripping off the artists, they would work FOR them - and to make their money they would rip off the customers instead. They did this by exploiting both the copyright and the artists - copyright is now insanely extended (to the point that the rights to works extend beyond the life of the author) this combined with the fantastic new tool of 'format switching' has allowed the evil people to sell the same work to customers again and again in various different 'formats'.

On top of this - thanks to the lobbying of the evil ones - it is now impossible for artists to make any money from their work without the help of the evil media companies.

So, while this is obviously an exaggeration - it is pretty much the situation we find ourselves in. The best outcome for the general populous is to REDUCE copyright - maybe to 3 years (to pick a figure out the air) - this will give creators the time to exploit their work, but still allows people to have some 'ownership' of culture - without having to pay the media companies tax.

How does this gel with the two above stories - well, it doesn't. There will inevitably be a culture clash - between what is best for big business and what is best for the 'guy on the street' - and as always a balance must be struck. In the short term you can bet that the governments and legal systems will follow the money - but this cannot last for ever - the methods of content distribution will continue to increase, and when they provide a valid method of rewarding the original content creator - you can be sure that the 'evil people' will be out of a job - until they can find the next way to exploit the artists.