When car makers have really good years, or really bad ones for that matter, they work very hard to attract customers, with new innovations, more car for the money, financing on better terms, or whatever, and when they have record years they give their workers huge bonuses, which I am sure most of you have heard about recently, and they also compete in an aggressive manner to keep sales up.
Copyright and patents are what allow people NOT to compete in the marketplace, as least for the first decade or two a new item is in the marketplace. . .only now copyrights are being extended to include the entire lifetime, not only of the copyright holder, but of the audience as well.
Something is wrong.
The Information Age Is Being Ruled By The Information Rich
As Surely as the Transcontinental Railroads Were Ruled For
Decades By The Robber Barons.
The Information Rich had a free ride on the Superhighways, about 25 years worth of free ride, and now the Information Poor want a ride so the Information Rich are shutting down the free rides and are selling tickets. . .selling tickets to something which until this year was so inexpensive that it it hardly paid to figure out what to charge any person, much less any institution.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Brief History of the Internet, by Michael Hart