Clark D. Asay

When a farmer buys a tractor that costs a small fortune, who owns it? The instinctive answer is the farmer. And if he owns the tractor, certainly he has the right to fix it, right? Like most things in life, it’s not that simple. Modern equipment runs on software and other technologies that still belong, legally, to the company that built the machine. The manufacturer retains intellectual property rights in the equipment even after selling it, and those rights can get in the way of the farmer fixing his own machine. Both sides own something. Neither owns everything.

When the framers made provision for copyright law in the U.S. Constitution, they probably didn’t envision a system that favors the wealthy. Yet today, that’s what we’ve got. High litigation costs and slow-moving courts have turned copyright enforcement into a luxury good. Unless you’re sitting on a pile of cash, your rights are often fool’s gold.