There's an absolutely fantastic site (http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php) with a dataset of old primary

There's an absolutely fantastic site (http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php) with a dataset of old primary sources on IP. When I read the constitution, "Section 1. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8" stands out to me as weird. They provide a justification for why they have these laws—"To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Why do they need to provide a reason, whereas most of the text is based on a set of "self-evident" truths? What I found, thanks largely in part to the site linked above, is that Copyright and patent laws provided an amazingly cheap method of central intelligence for our early government. They got a copy of every book and every new invention for free, delivered straight to them! They didn't need a CIA or NSA. Everyone would just send them their most valuable stuff. Now the world has changed. That setup provides no real value to the government anymore. At this point, information and inventions are a deluge. So I don't think it ever was much of a boon to the progress of arts and sciences, but I do think it was a dirt cheap way for a new federal government to keep it's pulse on the state of the world.