Strangely, in the US this is more or less how it used to be - things changed primarily due to lobbying. Lawrence Lessig has a great book covering the subject that he's published under a Creative Commons license so it's still his copyright but it's not locked away.
Information about the book and links to download copies of it can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)
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Strangely, in the US this is more or less how it used to be - things changed primarily due to lobbying. Lawrence Lessig has a great book covering the subject that he's published under a Creative Commons license so it's still his copyright but it's not locked away. Information about the book and links to download copies of it can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)