There is one very important point about intellectual property law that I think some people are missing, or maybe have never heard (I hadn't until recently). The fundamental purpose of copyrights and patents is not to protect the holders of those copyrights and patents. That is the secondary purpose. The primary reason that intellectual property laws were created were to benefit the consumer. They achieve this goal is by protecting the intellectual property of inventors, thus giving inventors incentives(ie making money) to continue developing new products.

Here's a hypothetical to illustrate the distinction - let's say that it was somehow possible to guarantee that no matter what, the same number of new inventions/music would be produced. In this highly improbable world, intellctual property laws could and should be thrown out because they would no longer do what they were created to do (that is, benifit the consumer). Why does this matter? Well, it helps to correctly frame discussions about intellectual property. What everyone (including law makers) should be asking themselves about each piece of IP law is NOT "is this law fair to patent/copyright holders", it should be "does this law, in the grand scheme, benefit the consumer."

One last comment -- having said all this, I realize that the power of corporations has probably been strong enough to shift the interpretation of IP law in the courts to the side of protecting inventors, even if this wasn't its original intent.

-Adam