I appreciate that you're not making and argument and, rather, trying to give the HN audience some perspective as to what the parties who benefit from the curren

I appreciate that you're not making and argument and, rather, trying to give the HN audience some perspective as to what the parties who benefit from the current "intellectual property" regime might be thinking. Several sibling comments to this one think you're trying to make some kind of argument for draconian "IP" measures. You've made a comment to the effect that you're not (and I didn't read your parent comment that way) but I think it's worth me pointing our your intention explicitly. Jack Valenti had particularly repugnant beliefs in that he stated that copyright should be infinite. (I don't have the exact quote, but it was something like "1 day less than forever...") Those kinds of beliefs show an incredible blindness to the reality that art and culture are fundamentally built upon transforming older works. There are no new stories under the sun.