I think the current copyright laws are already too overreaching and need to be overhauled. They are basically owning a work forever now, and that's not how copy

I think the current copyright laws are already too overreaching and need to be overhauled. They are basically owning a work forever now, and that's not how copyright was supposed to work. Copyright was supposed to protect the creator for a while, and then release it in the public domain, so other creators can make variations of it, and further enrich the culture, which was actually the ultimate goal of copyright. Protecting the creator was just a means to an end, not the very end itself, which is how MPAA and RIAA are acting right now - like they own everything and forever (with the perpetual 20 year extensions), and are entitled to laws that further protect it, no matter what other rights they abuse to do that (case in point: SOPA, Internet disconnections, ISP monitoring for piracy, etc). And no, "intellectual property" is not just like real property. Why? Because you can't just take someone's property and make variations of it, but you can do it with creative works, and it has been done since the beginning of time. And again, this was the ultimate goal of copyright, to allow other people later on to use those works, for the betterment of the whole society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvd5JZkUXY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvd5JZkUXY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq5D43qAsVg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq5D43qAsVg So don't assume that just because they named it Intellectual Property now, it's exactly the same as real property. It's actually more unlike real property than it is like it. IP is more of a misnomer in this case. It's the same thing with patents. It's probably safe to assume that they changed it to that name exactly because people would think of it as real property, and give them more control over it than they ever should've had.