>A copyright is a short-term monopoly granted to ensure that authors can recoup expense before the rush comes in. It's not meant as anything more than that. Th

>A copyright is a short-term monopoly granted to ensure that authors can recoup expense before the rush comes in. It's not meant as anything more than that. This is one view, but to say that "it's not meant as anything more than that" is not accurate. Even John Locke believed that authors had fundamental rights to their creation. (source: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1983614 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1983614) The Continental Congress resolution to pass copyright legislation was inspired by author Joel Barlow who wrote in his 1783 letter to Congress: "There is certainly no kind of property, in the nature of things, so much his own, as the works which a person originates from his own creative imagination: And when he has spent great part of his life in study, wasted his time, his fortune & perhaps his health in improving his knowledge & correcting his taste, it is a principle of natural justice that he should be entitled to the profits arising from the sale of his works as a compensation for his labor in producing them, & his risque of reputation in offering them to the Public."