A brief history of intellectual property, or why 1790 was more culturally progressive than 2012.

Pull quote: "The disconnect between these two worlds—one in which physically distant actors can have a very substantial impact (good or bad) upon you or your property, and one in which it is difficult to bring law to bear upon those very actors—is at the heart of the problem that SOPA is trying to solve.

It’s a profoundly difficult problem.  Some of us saw it coming, twenty years ago or so.  An enormous amount of creative and innovative thinking is going to be required if we are to solve it in a sensible way.

SOPA does reflect some creative and innovative thinking; indeed, it embodies a radical new plan for the way that law enforcement will proceed on the Net.  But the new plan is deeply flawed, and would set us on precisely the wrong course for dealing with this difficult challenge."

Plagiarism is the misrepresentation of authorship. Typically, words and ideas conceived by one person are attributed to another person. Open Source software WCopyfind download too...

"[F]or some of the proposed inventions, there may only be a handful of people in the world qualified to actually make a judgment on whether a development is sufficiently innovative so as to justify a patent. None of those people, presumably, will be employed by the patent office."
Which reminds me, whoever hired Einstein really deserved a bonus.