Are you saying that the great inventors, innovators and opportunists of our country learned their morals from steamboat willie cartoons? Thinking that a childs morals are the responsiblity of the entertainment industry is the real problem. I hope your last comment was sarcasam because if you really meant it than I sure hope you don't have kids.
'Here son I don't have the time to teach you the difference between right and wrong so sit in front of this television and it will reveal it all to you.'
No I didn't get that especially given the Informative modifier the parent recieved. Satire usually gets the Funny qualifier so I guess I wasn't the only one that missed it since I didn't mod the parent. The comment did appear a bit out of place given it's on slashdot and seems to credit SCO and discredit ESR but I don't assume anything when reading public forums since all are free to particpate. Other then the position being inconsistant with the typical slashdot poster there was no evidence of satire that jumped out at me. Am I missing something?
Does Eric Raymond's gaurded comments since releasing Comparator indicate that the results were not favorable????
I don't think so. MD5 conparisons are good for finding exact matches not partial matches as would be used in a derivative/obsucated claim so I'm not sure his program would find all of what SCO is claiming. I don't know the details of how his program works but knowing the problem space it would take some time to run a comparison against copied snippets within a file since it would involve splitting up the file many different ways and comparing all of these chunks agains chunks of another source tree split up and MD5'd in a similar fassion. So to confirm a negative requires a lot of caution and due diligence to avoid getting egg on the face.
More importantly his program may find matches and each of those matches must then be researched to determine the source of the IP. Remember code can be indentical and still legal. So needing to do all the legal research required to validate each similarity as legal or not would take some time. I think any assumptions on what may or may not be found by Comparator is a bit premature given all the work needed to produce a meaningful conclusion. If Raymond simply threw out a number like "Comparator only found 2% similarity between code bases" he'd be just as guilty of FUD slinging as Mr. McBride claim that millions of lines of SYS V code match linux 2.4 kernal code.
When opening up the psychology pandoras box you have to be careful. Using psychology in combination with statistics has to be one of most 2 edged sword when used in an deductive logic argument (as well as the most foolish).
Firtly, defacement with psychological influence will happen mostly based on the type of content the site is hosting rather than any bias torwards the OS running. Granted if OS 1 is less secure than OS 2 that many more people will succeed in breaking into said site. But you must also consider attempts. Say the internets top 1000 most likely to get defaced (based on content) web sites run 80% Linux and 10% Windows. What would the results show? No matter how you cut it if these factors were distrubed in this manner linux would come out as being more defaced than windows unless linux was 700% more secure than windows.
Now for those hackers that do use the OS the site is running as their primary motivation for target selection how do they psychologically decide which OS to target? Are they motivated by a challenge so hence pick a more difficult target. Are they motivated by animosity torwards the assoicated corporation of the OS and pick MS? Are they influenced by the OS they are running and hence pick the OS for which they have the most compatible tools at their disposal? You see playing the psychological card here leaves you with an empty hand since I doubt you've done all the needed statictical gathering to answers the questions posed above. You see psychology is indiviudual staticstics are collective they don't fit together into a cohesive argument easily. While the two can be used toghether if all the pertinent factors are assessed to thrown them toghether as you and this entire post has is simply foolish.
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
It's got to be obvious given Darl McBride just echoing what Steve Balmer stated recently that SCO is fighting as a proxy in MS's war against the GPL and OSS.
Steve:
Ballmer also questioned IBM's "support" of its WebSphere application server on Linux.
"Will IBM tell you the road map for Linux? Can they respond to your request for a new feature? No, they can't do that. They don't control Linux," he said.
"Does IBM fix Linux problems the way IBM stands behind and fixes the MVS operating system? Of course not," he continued. "Does IBM indemnify the intellectual property in Linux the way it indemnifies the intellectual property in every IBM software product?... The answer is certainly no
SCO:
"We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model. It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week. If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license."
This is simply MS's new attempt to attack OSS and the GPL. They found out way back when that they were their own worst enemny in the battle against Linux so they hire..opps.. I mean license IP they don't need from SCO so that they can get SCO to fight proxy for them so they get less egg on their face in the process. I'm starting to think SCO may be just be cannon fodder for MS sending them in first to test the waters. IBM has now opened up the pandoras box with firing patents into the foray. MS has a few patents in their warchest too and OSS is so transparent and the patent office so lame that I'm sure MS could find at least a few instances of patent infringement within the OSS software that's out there today. I know the OSS commnunity could rapidly replace just about any piece of code that infringes quite rapidly so that angle may cost more than it's worth to MS.......unless.....they can find a way to drag things out in court where they can simply win by attrition against smaller OOS org's. IANAL but perhaps the SCO case is simply a test shot at how to do that. Claim IP infringement but hold your claims behind NDA's that prevent the issue from actually being resolved. Most slashdotters see the the writing on the wall about SCO's goose being cooked. Let's all hope this goose gets cooked real good so MS get's the message that this angle ain't gonna work for them and then they'll have to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to stop OSS and the GPL.
Why is it the slashdot community continually flames the software world when they attempt to hide vunerablities by restricting access to the inner workings of software but there is rarely talk about applying the same approach to our nations infrastructure? I can understand scenarios in which there is no feasible way to secure the vulnerability but in cases where a mechanism exists for securing or at least reducing the vuln shouldn't our society be more open about it's infrastructure secrets. With the current model it all comes down to trusting an exclusive group of individuals with the secrets of our nations achilles heel not to abuse the power this knowledge grants for their own personal gain. With no public oversight these vulns can simply be ignored until terrorist discover the vuln by indirect means or simply brute force in the case of an invading army. If the public becomes aware of vulns then ideally they'll apply more pressure to have the vulns addressed rather than just placing our bets on the fact that "those stupid terrorists would never figure that out".
Sorry Jabber is only the protocol / architecture of the IM and the jabber.com site does only offer win versions. There are many open source Java clients written which implement the jabber protocol such as Swagger which I'm currently using. You can check it out here
The justification comes in the form of a rich and robust API that included crypto, disk/network/serial io, collections, graphics, http(servlets), J2EE, database connectivity, and the list goes on. The relatively open JCP makes it highly likely that new technologies that are actually needed on a widescale basis will make their way into the language and API set in decent time. Sure libraries and API's are provided for various other languages and platforms but rarely are those 100% consistant so if you want to develop for more than one platform you are stuck learning each platforms API's, syntax, and system idiosyncrocies. With Java the only time you spend is on learing the ideosyncrocies of each platforms JVM implementation and rarely do you need to use/learn an entirely different API. So as a developer the 2 things I value most are time and flexiblity. Java for me offers the best balance of the 2 for me. Anyone who develops for a living knows that the time spent coding the inital release of a program is small in comparision to that programs evolution over time. If I decide to develop in let's say Python, C++ or C# if the code I write today needs to be ported to say AIX later I'm going to have to rewrite at least some of my code to make that happen. With java I'm only tweaking a few things and then I'm up and running. Also Sun and the JCP are constantly working to make sure JVM implementations improve overtime so if let's say a technology such as hyperthreading comes around I don't need to rewrite my code to take atvantage of that SUN will modify the JVM for that architechture so I get all the perks without any of the time investment.
The applications written in Java that I use and like are 1 the IDE I use Eclipse which comes with all types of great plugins that let me do everything from debug an opensource J2EE container to work with my RDBMS platforms on the back end. I've also been using Freenet a great P2P app with lots of cool ideas that radically change the way information is distributed and consumed. Jabber a IM client written entirely in java. And think of it from a users perspective. If I'm going to spend time learning to use an application do I really want to have to go looking for a brand new application to fill that ones need everytime I want to purchase a computer that runs a different OS than the one I had before. No it's a waste of time and money. My only hope is either that the vendor of said product is generous and ports their application to both platforms or that they decided to write the application in an OS neutral technology such as Java.
In repsonse to:
Can you think of a single language/runtime that feels so out of place no matter what platform you're running on? A platform that makes you deal with CLASSPATH, non-native and slow widgets, and shell scripts to set a thousand environment variables before starting your "portable" application?
I suppose you think it would be eaiser to port an application written in C,C++ yourself (assuming you even have the source). Of my favorite applications listed above I haven't had to do any of this to get them to run on mutiple platforms (MS 95 - XP, FreeBSD, Linux (many distros)) so don't knock the entire Java platform just because the few applications you've tried this on reqiured a lot of work to get running. You are describing and implementation detail specific to the applications you run.
And you say:
just as portable as Java as long as your libraries/toolkits are cross-platform....provided you even have access to the source what if you are encorporating 3rd party libraries into your code. If they're not Java their is no guaranty this will be possible. You will be left begging the vendor, believe me I know.
And my last reason to use Java over C++, C is that garbage collection doesn't have to be integrated into my application, buffer overflows aren't an issue (at least at my application level) and just as a programmer of a Windows Application isn't resposible for se
Asking theoretical questions about replacing the existing infrastructure and service provider model requires thinking a bit outside the box that's why the questions such as "What hardware advances?" were posed along with the question. Unless we consider burried trade secrets conspiricy or gestopa patent enforcement to prevent its implementation it's probably not going to be possible to completely replace or do away with the established model without using yet to come technology or compromising on some of the expectations of the existing model. If it were as easy as a askslashdot post then it would probably already be out there if even only in a niche form. If we are willing to change what we expect from the massively always connected internet of today then mosly connected and even sometimes connected P2P networks provide a compelling alternative to the internet of today. You mention the need for Fiber to the house or even across the ocean but that is not the only means of transport accross the oceans and to the last mile. Don't forget that cargoships, airplanes, submarines already serve purpose of connecting the continents how much would it cost a trade vessel between new york and london to carry data between the continents? The cost is the sum of the cost of hardware plus the cost of powering/maintaining and added fuel costs due to transport weight. This is more than the proposal of the cost of hardware only but I guaranty that it's less that the cost of a say outfitting the ship with a satellite uplink. The last mile is covered by the fact that the P2P device is mobile or even installed in cars so that any form of public interaction helps send and recieve data from nodes that have it to nodes that need it. Remember even TCP/IP can be implemented by carrier pigeon so a higher level intelligently designed transport protocol coupled with sophistcated P2P software could provide the level of distribution needed for this. Again expectations would have to change. An instant message from someone in china to someone in the US may take a few days or maybe even a week to get to it's destination but for content that is more static such as informational multimedia they would eventually become massively distributed so getting that type of info would be more instanteous. And the exsiting networks could still contribute, say you used this new theoritcal network and wanted some direct one on one p2p chat with your friend on the other side of the globe. Well pay for uplink time with your local Instant Internet Cafe (TM) and they'll connect you real time for a fee. That way you only pay for instant high speed always on type connections when you need them not when you don't. I think you could create a massivly distributed network without needing any breakthroughs in technology, you'd just need the homosapien-hours required to develop specifications and software for the protocol and P2P network software and then figure out what radio frequencies/bands are public and the hardware required to broadcast over those bands. At the very least it's 14 years away, assuming someone has a patent that would block this from being implemented. Of course there always market demand to cover costs of development and to some level this would be a boon for hardware manufactures since it would enable them to reach areas of geographic isolation since even small isolated P2P networks can be quite useful provided they get some remote exposure from time to time (such as an airplane flying overhead). They wouldn't have to wait on network build out for hardware deployment the 2 would become one in the same.
Speaking of buying the laws that must be where they are coming from when Oppenheim makes a rediculus comment like the one below claiming increased cost to produce and distribute works cause I know for damn sure the $ required to produce and distribute a work is much less than it used to be but I guess I'm forgetting that they also must convice people to buy crap so maybe he's aslo referring to the massive amount of commercial advertising required to convince people to buy what is becomming more and more a fusion of different regurgitated feces:
Matt Oppenheim from the Recording Industry Association of America responds: You are right that the basis for copyright protection is in the Constitution, and that its goals are to further the arts.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that: "The Congress shall have the power⦠To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
As our society has grown and our economy has developed, Congress has extended the term of copyright protection a number of times.
Given the increased cost to produce and distribute copyrighted works, Congress has tried to keep pace with what it has believed is necessary to continue to incentivize creators and publishers. Congress also was concerned that American creators should not have less copyright protection than is commonly provided abroad, and they therefore extended the term to match the copyright term in Europe and elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying that the great inventors, innovators and opportunists of our country learned their morals from steamboat willie cartoons? Thinking that a childs morals are the responsiblity of the entertainment industry is the real problem. I hope your last comment was sarcasam because if you really meant it than I sure hope you don't have kids. 'Here son I don't have the time to teach you the difference between right and wrong so sit in front of this television and it will reveal it all to you.'
No I didn't get that especially given the Informative modifier the parent recieved. Satire usually gets the Funny qualifier so I guess I wasn't the only one that missed it since I didn't mod the parent. The comment did appear a bit out of place given it's on slashdot and seems to credit SCO and discredit ESR but I don't assume anything when reading public forums since all are free to particpate. Other then the position being inconsistant with the typical slashdot poster there was no evidence of satire that jumped out at me. Am I missing something?
Does Eric Raymond's gaurded comments since releasing Comparator indicate that the results were not favorable????
I don't think so. MD5 conparisons are good for finding exact matches not partial matches as would be used in a derivative/obsucated claim so I'm not sure his program would find all of what SCO is claiming. I don't know the details of how his program works but knowing the problem space it would take some time to run a comparison against copied snippets within a file since it would involve splitting up the file many different ways and comparing all of these chunks agains chunks of another source tree split up and MD5'd in a similar fassion. So to confirm a negative requires a lot of caution and due diligence to avoid getting egg on the face.
More importantly his program may find matches and each of those matches must then be researched to determine the source of the IP. Remember code can be indentical and still legal. So needing to do all the legal research required to validate each similarity as legal or not would take some time. I think any assumptions on what may or may not be found by Comparator is a bit premature given all the work needed to produce a meaningful conclusion. If Raymond simply threw out a number like "Comparator only found 2% similarity between code bases" he'd be just as guilty of FUD slinging as Mr. McBride claim that millions of lines of SYS V code match linux 2.4 kernal code.
All clues point to Computer Associates as the unnamed Fortune 500 company.
If you match this article's date with the date of SCO's announcement of a fortune 500 sell it all adds up.
news.com article: CA settles Canopy contract suit
I'm sure Canopy cut them a good deal in order to claim they had a fortune 500 company signing up for SCOSource.
When opening up the psychology pandoras box you have to be careful. Using psychology in combination with statistics has to be one of most 2 edged sword when used in an deductive logic argument (as well as the most foolish).
Firtly, defacement with psychological influence will happen mostly based on the type of content the site is hosting rather than any bias torwards the OS running. Granted if OS 1 is less secure than OS 2 that many more people will succeed in breaking into said site. But you must also consider attempts. Say the internets top 1000 most likely to get defaced (based on content) web sites run 80% Linux and 10% Windows. What would the results show? No matter how you cut it if these factors were distrubed in this manner linux would come out as being more defaced than windows unless linux was 700% more secure than windows.
Now for those hackers that do use the OS the site is running as their primary motivation for target selection how do they psychologically decide which OS to target? Are they motivated by a challenge so hence pick a more difficult target. Are they motivated by animosity torwards the assoicated corporation of the OS and pick MS? Are they influenced by the OS they are running and hence pick the OS for which they have the most compatible tools at their disposal? You see playing the psychological card here leaves you with an empty hand since I doubt you've done all the needed statictical gathering to answers the questions posed above. You see psychology is indiviudual staticstics are collective they don't fit together into a cohesive argument easily. While the two can be used toghether if all the pertinent factors are assessed to thrown them toghether as you and this entire post has is simply foolish.
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
It's got to be obvious given Darl McBride just echoing what Steve Balmer stated recently that SCO is fighting as a proxy in MS's war against the GPL and OSS. Steve: ... The answer is certainly no
SCO:
..opps.. I mean license IP they don't need from SCO so that they can get SCO to fight proxy for them so they get less egg on their face in the process. I'm starting to think SCO may be just be cannon fodder for MS sending them in first to test the waters. IBM has now opened up the pandoras box with firing patents into the foray. MS has a few patents in their warchest too and OSS is so transparent and the patent office so lame that I'm sure MS could find at least a few instances of patent infringement within the OSS software that's out there today. I know the OSS commnunity could rapidly replace just about any piece of code that infringes quite rapidly so that angle may cost more than it's worth to MS.......unless.....they can find a way to drag things out in court where they can simply win by attrition against smaller OOS org's. IANAL but perhaps the SCO case is simply a test shot at how to do that. Claim IP infringement but hold your claims behind NDA's that prevent the issue from actually being resolved. Most slashdotters see the the writing on the wall about SCO's goose being cooked. Let's all hope this goose gets cooked real good so MS get's the message that this angle ain't gonna work for them and then they'll have to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to stop OSS and the GPL.
Ballmer also questioned IBM's "support" of its WebSphere application server on Linux. "Will IBM tell you the road map for Linux? Can they respond to your request for a new feature? No, they can't do that. They don't control Linux," he said. "Does IBM fix Linux problems the way IBM stands behind and fixes the MVS operating system? Of course not," he continued. "Does IBM indemnify the intellectual property in Linux the way it indemnifies the intellectual property in every IBM software product?
"We view IBM's counterclaim filing today as an effort to distract attention from its flawed Linux business model. It repeats the same unsubstantiated allegations made in Red Hat's filing earlier this week. If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license."
This is simply MS's new attempt to attack OSS and the GPL. They found out way back when that they were their own worst enemny in the battle against Linux so they hire
Why is it the slashdot community continually flames the software world when they attempt to hide vunerablities by restricting access to the inner workings of software but there is rarely talk about applying the same approach to our nations infrastructure? I can understand scenarios in which there is no feasible way to secure the vulnerability but in cases where a mechanism exists for securing or at least reducing the vuln shouldn't our society be more open about it's infrastructure secrets. With the current model it all comes down to trusting an exclusive group of individuals with the secrets of our nations achilles heel not to abuse the power this knowledge grants for their own personal gain. With no public oversight these vulns can simply be ignored until terrorist discover the vuln by indirect means or simply brute force in the case of an invading army. If the public becomes aware of vulns then ideally they'll apply more pressure to have the vulns addressed rather than just placing our bets on the fact that "those stupid terrorists would never figure that out".
Sorry Jabber is only the protocol / architecture of the IM and the jabber.com site does only offer win versions. There are many open source Java clients written which implement the jabber protocol such as Swagger which I'm currently using. You can check it out here
The justification comes in the form of a rich and robust API that included crypto, disk/network/serial io, collections, graphics, http(servlets), J2EE, database connectivity, and the list goes on. The relatively open JCP makes it highly likely that new technologies that are actually needed on a widescale basis will make their way into the language and API set in decent time. Sure libraries and API's are provided for various other languages and platforms but rarely are those 100% consistant so if you want to develop for more than one platform you are stuck learning each platforms API's, syntax, and system idiosyncrocies. With Java the only time you spend is on learing the ideosyncrocies of each platforms JVM implementation and rarely do you need to use/learn an entirely different API. So as a developer the 2 things I value most are time and flexiblity. Java for me offers the best balance of the 2 for me. Anyone who develops for a living knows that the time spent coding the inital release of a program is small in comparision to that programs evolution over time. If I decide to develop in let's say Python, C++ or C# if the code I write today needs to be ported to say AIX later I'm going to have to rewrite at least some of my code to make that happen. With java I'm only tweaking a few things and then I'm up and running. Also Sun and the JCP are constantly working to make sure JVM implementations improve overtime so if let's say a technology such as hyperthreading comes around I don't need to rewrite my code to take atvantage of that SUN will modify the JVM for that architechture so I get all the perks without any of the time investment.
...provided you even have access to the source what if you are encorporating 3rd party libraries into your code. If they're not Java their is no guaranty this will be possible. You will be left begging the vendor, believe me I know.
The applications written in Java that I use and like are 1 the IDE I use Eclipse which comes with all types of great plugins that let me do everything from debug an opensource J2EE container to work with my RDBMS platforms on the back end. I've also been using Freenet a great P2P app with lots of cool ideas that radically change the way information is distributed and consumed. Jabber a IM client written entirely in java. And think of it from a users perspective. If I'm going to spend time learning to use an application do I really want to have to go looking for a brand new application to fill that ones need everytime I want to purchase a computer that runs a different OS than the one I had before. No it's a waste of time and money. My only hope is either that the vendor of said product is generous and ports their application to both platforms or that they decided to write the application in an OS neutral technology such as Java.
In repsonse to: Can you think of a single language/runtime that feels so out of place no matter what platform you're running on? A platform that makes you deal with CLASSPATH, non-native and slow widgets, and shell scripts to set a thousand environment variables before starting your "portable" application? I suppose you think it would be eaiser to port an application written in C,C++ yourself (assuming you even have the source). Of my favorite applications listed above I haven't had to do any of this to get them to run on mutiple platforms (MS 95 - XP, FreeBSD, Linux (many distros)) so don't knock the entire Java platform just because the few applications you've tried this on reqiured a lot of work to get running. You are describing and implementation detail specific to the applications you run.
And you say: just as portable as Java as long as your libraries/toolkits are cross-platform.
And my last reason to use Java over C++, C is that garbage collection doesn't have to be integrated into my application, buffer overflows aren't an issue (at least at my application level) and just as a programmer of a Windows Application isn't resposible for se
Asking theoretical questions about replacing the existing infrastructure and service provider model requires thinking a bit outside the box that's why the questions such as "What hardware advances?" were posed along with the question. Unless we consider burried trade secrets conspiricy or gestopa patent enforcement to prevent its implementation it's probably not going to be possible to completely replace or do away with the established model without using yet to come technology or compromising on some of the expectations of the existing model. If it were as easy as a askslashdot post then it would probably already be out there if even only in a niche form. If we are willing to change what we expect from the massively always connected internet of today then mosly connected and even sometimes connected P2P networks provide a compelling alternative to the internet of today. You mention the need for Fiber to the house or even across the ocean but that is not the only means of transport accross the oceans and to the last mile. Don't forget that cargoships, airplanes, submarines already serve purpose of connecting the continents how much would it cost a trade vessel between new york and london to carry data between the continents? The cost is the sum of the cost of hardware plus the cost of powering/maintaining and added fuel costs due to transport weight. This is more than the proposal of the cost of hardware only but I guaranty that it's less that the cost of a say outfitting the ship with a satellite uplink. The last mile is covered by the fact that the P2P device is mobile or even installed in cars so that any form of public interaction helps send and recieve data from nodes that have it to nodes that need it. Remember even TCP/IP can be implemented by carrier pigeon so a higher level intelligently designed transport protocol coupled with sophistcated P2P software could provide the level of distribution needed for this. Again expectations would have to change. An instant message from someone in china to someone in the US may take a few days or maybe even a week to get to it's destination but for content that is more static such as informational multimedia they would eventually become massively distributed so getting that type of info would be more instanteous. And the exsiting networks could still contribute, say you used this new theoritcal network and wanted some direct one on one p2p chat with your friend on the other side of the globe. Well pay for uplink time with your local Instant Internet Cafe (TM) and they'll connect you real time for a fee. That way you only pay for instant high speed always on type connections when you need them not when you don't. I think you could create a massivly distributed network without needing any breakthroughs in technology, you'd just need the homosapien-hours required to develop specifications and software for the protocol and P2P network software and then figure out what radio frequencies/bands are public and the hardware required to broadcast over those bands. At the very least it's 14 years away, assuming someone has a patent that would block this from being implemented. Of course there always market demand to cover costs of development and to some level this would be a boon for hardware manufactures since it would enable them to reach areas of geographic isolation since even small isolated P2P networks can be quite useful provided they get some remote exposure from time to time (such as an airplane flying overhead). They wouldn't have to wait on network build out for hardware deployment the 2 would become one in the same.
Speaking of buying the laws that must be where they are coming from when Oppenheim makes a rediculus comment like the one below claiming increased cost to produce and distribute works cause I know for damn sure the $ required to produce and distribute a work is much less than it used to be but I guess I'm forgetting that they also must convice people to buy crap so maybe he's aslo referring to the massive amount of commercial advertising required to convince people to buy what is becomming more and more a fusion of different regurgitated feces: Matt Oppenheim from the Recording Industry Association of America responds:
You are right that the basis for copyright protection is in the Constitution, and that its goals are to further the arts.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that: "The Congress shall have the power⦠To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
As our society has grown and our economy has developed, Congress has extended the term of copyright protection a number of times.
Given the increased cost to produce and distribute copyrighted works, Congress has tried to keep pace with what it has believed is necessary to continue to incentivize creators and publishers. Congress also was concerned that American creators should not have less copyright protection than is commonly provided abroad, and they therefore extended the term to match the copyright term in Europe and elsewhere.