The US seems to want to be a copyright and patent based economy... in other words to rely on the creativity of the past, to steal and deal in copyright and patents from non-US sources, to extend patents and copyrights way beyond the original reasonable time, jurisdiction and geographic limits that applied not 30 years ago, to create 'trade treaties' with other nations that ensure that said copyright and patents will be recognised for eternity and to ensure that US industry and the economy, and the numerous patent trolls who operate on its peripheries, have an income stream until time immemorial.

That's OK though... because what they're trying to do is also what's killing the US as an economic competitor.

In the 19th century they stole ideas, patents and copyright freely from Britain and Europe and became an economic powerhouse when they improved on those ideas to produce even better product than their Continental cousins, much more efficiently and much more cheaply.

The US then operated on the basis that the 'free flow of ideas' was critical to world trade, and 'freedom and liberty', and that its citizens should have the right to watch the works of the great bards, playwrights and poets on their local stages, in their local publications, and that nobody had the right to constrain art, literature and the like or demand fees for use of same from other jurisdictions.

Now the story is different, however. Now they don't even have to generate the ideas, or create the product, or develop the books, plays or whatever.... they can simply buy them from the impoverished artists (usually under contract provisions that accrue ALL patent or copyright rather than licensing whatever they need for whatever work they plan to produce) for minimal payment and miserly royalties (and then only if said artist has a bloody good lawyer) and then they can live for the life of the author/musician/artist plus 70 years of the proceeds of same... making sure that copyright/patents etc. are re-enabled within that time for another 70 years time by way of later reproduction... to the copyright/patent holder.

The problems with this state of affairs are numerous and self evident... but its good to see an atrophying of the US's entrepreneurial sprit as its economy falls into the hands of the parasitic (lawyers, accountants, bankers and financial mavens), and those who are entrepreneurial and productive shy away from possible law suits, police actions or whatever because their particular idea for making a buck is likely to be jumped on by the leeches in the copyright and patent chains. I mean, if they wanted creativity and enterprise in the American economy, it may have paid them to dump patents and copyright completely, and let a new breed of robber barons take over from the failed stultified parasites who have led American industry so far down the toilet it will probably never climb out.

And in so many other pursuits... science, engineering, software development and the like... successful research and product is generally built by innovating new product rather than inventing. In science in particular, new knowledge and theories are generally built by proposing new explanations about the relationship between two KNOWN variables and then testing them. Try that, when developing new drugs, or creating a sustainable fusion reaction, or whatever... when the KNOWN variables/effects/whatever are patented or copyrighted or otherwise restricted and the holders of said patents/copyrights/restrictions want their 'cut of the action'.

Put simply, that's a huge brake on the US economy... which many other economies (eg. China, Korea, Japan and the like) simply won't tolerate or acknowledge. They take what works, and improve on it... and that's one reason why they succeed.

Now it's possible that the US may go to war to protect its patents and copyright (many/most of which were acquired from non-US sources), but it should not expect the rest of the world to support it when it does so.

Bottom line: American politicians, judges and executives don't seem to realise what a deep hole they are digging themselves into with their attempt to create an income stream from the deep dark past, using questionable justifications (providing incentive for authors 70 to 90 years after they are dead for Chrissake! Especially when ALL rights have accrued to the copyright licensee rather than the authors descendants!) for activities that actually stifle creativity.

Me? I welcome what the US politicians, judges, industry, corrupt lobbyists and the like are doing. They are ensuring that the US economy gets progressively weaker and more atrophied, that its traditional inventiveness and creativity will be decimated, that it will no longer be able to economically or technologically support the huge military-industrial power that is about the only clout the US continues to have, and that the US deficits will increase and balance of payments will continue to decrease (as the world stops buying increasingly obsolete US technology and product ranges).

Factor in that the US political establishment fails to grasp the facts that little numbers like Green technology would actually introduce energy efficiencies (reducing their massive energy deficits for example) and increasing demand (stimulating economic growth - China realises this, believe me!), that the economic rationalism of its industrialists means its major industries have all based themselves overseas, and that major competitor nations (China, Korea, Taiwan and to a certain extent India) are re-tooling and developing at the exactly the right time for the next wave of economic and technological development (which the US can't even afford to do now, even if that was on the policy cards), and that critical US economic infrastructure (roads, railways, bridges, sewerage, power, water and utilities et al) has been run into the ground as a result of 30 years of 'economic rationalist' neglect... and the situation doesn't look to good for our American cousins.

They're digging themselves yet another hole... and all they can do is play politics in Congress, live on dreams of a fading 'empire' and blame the rest of the world for their problems.

It's nuts. But no more nutty than a hundred other things they've done over the last 40 years. I wonder how Sergei Prokofiev (who died in 1953) would have felt about it.

Frank O'Connor is a contributor to the LINK eamil group.