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Copyright was meant to provide an incentive to artists, not an unlimited monopoly to corporations.

"...That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. - THOMAS JEFFERSON "

It's also worth noting that Bob Young founded the Center for the Public Domain, which is among other things partly responsible for iBiblio, Creative Commons and the Eldred v. Ashcroft case (which McBride directly attacks in his letter).

The Center for the Public Domain (i.e. Bob Young's tax bracket lowering company) uses Windows to run its payroll program, actually.

Oh, and remember when Bob Young said that he *only* uses Linux? It sure looked like he was using the windows 2000 computer (kept around for programs that Linux doesn't have [dreamweaver]) and Internet Explorer to check out his stock. :-/

I've been fairly pleased with Redhat initiatives like The Center for the Public Domain which funds ibiblio (was Metalab, was Sunsite) and other groups working for freedom of information. We know that free software is political and having a representative in various political processes can be helpful. So, what standards bodies is Redhat on, what kind of political lobbying does it do and what issues does it advocate in those fora?