Allegedly, the copyright laws are supposed to exist to encourage the creation of original work(s), and to protect the
creator of original works, from having someone else sell it as their own. Also, it gave the creator the right to make copies of their own works, to publish them, and in most ways, to control how these works were used.

SO MUCH FOR THE FAIRY TALE!

What was the world like before Copyright laws?
Well, it wasn't a lawless place where authors, sculptors,
songwriters, poets, etc., were kept from creating original works, nor were they constantly having to fight people who were "ripping their works off ". Think about it for a second. Were there copyright laws when DaVinci was alive, when Aristotle was orating, when Plato was giving his Dialogs? No, and yet, their works were created, they became famous, and all without the umbrella of  "copyright protection".

So, how did Copyright Law come to be? Well, it was generated as the result of two of the most important driving forces in Western civilization, namely, big business and its greed to monopolize and make profits, and governmental greed to more power and attempts to quash freedom.

Our Copyright Laws were modeled on those of England. The history of Copyright Law in England begins with the printers and their desire to monopolize and control the printing of books. At the same time, the English monarch, was interested in controlling free speech. Both interests came together with the establishment of so-called "copyright laws" or "the right to make copies law". A very good short history of copyright is found at : http://artnetweb.com/iola/journal/history/1994/copyright.html#Heading3

The first modern copyright law was passed in England in 1709 CE
called the "Statute of 8 Anne". Antecedent to this year, governments and the royals rewarded people  with exclusive monopolies because they recognized that printing, unless controlled, was a threat to their rule.In 1556 , Queen Mary I granted a charter to the Stationers Company, a guild of printers,  with the right to burn prohibited books and jail the publishers. I KNOW the RIAA wish they were alive back then ! The Stationers began compiling  records of  the books which were approved by the royal censors and that entry began to be seen as the printer's (not the author's) exclusive right over the book. Here, we see the entry of the same situation of the record labels and their taking over of songwriter's copyright as their own.

Thus, we see that American copyright law, as a bastard child of English copyright law, was rooted in the dual purposes of the desire to quash free speech, and the greed of big business wanting to gain a monopoly over the creative works of individuals.

COPYRIGHT LAW UNDER WIPO INFLUENCE BECOMES A MALIGNANT MONSTER
There appears to be a very concerning thing that is happening here in 21st century America. There are certain globalist influences who seem determined to take us back two and a half centuries. The American revolution was fought to extract us from being under the thumb of European influence and control. But now, things are happening which demonstrate that certain people and groups are wanting to put us right back under those thumbs. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a recent Supreme Court decisions about the Constitutionality of a Texas law, used European law as a precedent upon which to decide the case. But, in the most flagrant example of the globalization movement, here in America, even though we had a perfectly serviceable Copyright Law that was working reasonably well, the United States Congress did a Title 17 implementation of a European copyright law, namely, a clone of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) copyright guidelines, and this became the Act which has enabled the RIAA to run roughshod over rights and file hundreds of lawsuits against citizens. Said act is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.
 

THE LIMITATION OF OF FIRST SALE
Under the doctrine of first sale, there is a limitation of copyright holder's rights. At the point his or her,  product(s) or work(s) enters the public sector and is sold, the limitation of first sale is that, once someone buys a book or a record, the copyright holder loses some control over what the buyer can do with the work. For example, I buy a new book. I read it, but don't want to keep it. I can hold a garage sale and sell the book. The copyright holder cannot call me up and tell me that I cannot sell the book. This has traditionally also applied to things like videotapes that you purchase, vinyl records, and even CDs.

But, something very insidious is happening. Back in the 1990s, the RIAA tried to get courts to say that you couldn't resell your CDs, and I believe, tried to get laws passed to say that as well.
They were unsuccessful, in large part, based on the limitation of first sale. But now, with digital files , it appears they are  trying to assert that there is no limitation of first sale, because,
when you buy a music CD, you don't really purchase the music, they (the RIAA / labels) just "license" it to you, much in the way software is licensed to you, meaning, you are allowed to use the product for an indefinite period, but you do not own it. And thus, if you never really purchased the music, only the CD as a physical media to carry the music on, you merely bought the media, not the message , not the music.

     Not long ago, someone tried to sell a song they bought on iTUNES for 99 cents, on eBAY. Well, after bids were made on it, eBAY pulled the item offline saying it violated some of their rules. The reason the person offering the tune did it, was to test this idea whether or not, you had the ability to resell a downloaded music file. He was not able to do it.

      It is very clear that the RIAA and its labels is using this "pay for license model" because of the way they are fighting the resale right at the US Copyright Department.
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/testimony/summ08.pdf
"I. The First Sale Doctrine Should Not Be Expanded To Digital Transmissions. If Congress were to extend the exemption in Section 109 of the Copyright Act to the distribution right in Section 106(3) of the Act for digital transmissions of musical works, as was proposed by the Digital Media Association ("DiMA") and the Home Recording Rights Coalition ("HRRC"), and also proposed in Section 4 of H.R. 3048, 105th Cong. 1st Sess. (1997), a serious problem could arise because several exclusive rights in Section 106 are implicated by digital transmissions. BMI is concerned that such an exemption would be claimed by users to cover all other copyright rights in the "exempt" transmissions, including the right of public performance. Because this problem would be averted by leaving the section unchanged, BMI does not support an expansion of the first sale doctrine."

So, when you buy a music CD, the way they (the labels/RIAA) see it, you are just kind of renting the music. You don't have the right to copy the music to another CD, you don't have the right to rip the CD to MP3 files, you don't have the right to lend the CD to a friend, and on and on. If you don't believe this, just write the RIAA and ask them , according to their view, if you buy a CD, do you have the right to lend that CD to a friend of yours for a week and let him listen to it and do what he wants with it. See what they say !

- to be continued-