1. It's obviously a social contract, it doesn't exist outside of a formalized legal system. There's nothing natural about it, especially since it's a rather recent innovation.

2. The current copyright term is far too long. As your quote from the Constitution states, it's purpose is To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, not to maximize the potential revenue to the creator of the work.

3. The remedies are ridiculously out of line. I'd recommend something along the lines of a small multiple of the cost of the work pirated, not several orders of magnitude larger.

4. Congress can retroactively extend or shorten the term of copyrights.

Hell, if you run on this issue I'll send some money your way.

I'm not all that big on property law in general but at least it makes some sense when talking about a localized object that cannot be simultaneously in the possession of two people at the same time.  "Intellectual Property" is nothing more than an attempt to treat ideas as property, and hence as a commercial object.  It is a means to put art and science under the yoke of capitalism and it retards our progress as a species.

If someone passes off someone else's work as their own then the proper remedy is to sue them for fraud.

I figured I'd cut right to the chase regarding one of the stronger arguments against IP to which the Austrians like to point.  James Watt and his steam engine .  (Not to be confused with Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel...)

That's an oldie.  But a more modern example is the movement of highly successful artists away from their record companies to allow them to pursue their own distribution methods.  Trent Reznor is my favorite example , mainly because I love his work.  And of course there's Radiohead as well.  And in both cases, their fist attempts were failures, even by their own standards.  Trent stayed with it and Radiohead has said they will not.  But it's certainly an interesting way to deal with the sale of IP.

from wikipedia:

The history of patents and patent laws is generally considered to have started in Italy with a Venetian Statute of 1474 which was issued by the Republic of Venice .^[1] They issued a decree by which new and inventive devices, once they had been put into practice, had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers. The period of protection was 10 years.^[2]

 

Patents, however, existed before the law. The first Italian patent was actually awarded by the Republic of Florence in 1421,^[3] and there is evidence suggesting that something like patents was used among some ancient Greek cities.^[4] In 500 BC, in the Greek city of Sybaris (located in what is now southern Italy), "encouragement was held out to all who should discover any new refinement in luxury, the profits arising from which were secured to the inventor by patent for the space of a year." ^[5]

Copyright was invented after the advent of the printing press and subsequent widening of public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers' monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Britain the King of England and Scotland was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company , essentially continuing the licensing of material for the benefit of printers that had long been in effect. The Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act, and gave the author in the new state of Britain rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Internationally, the Berne Convention in 1887 set out the scope of copyright protection, and is still in force to this day. Copyright has grown from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry , covering such items as sound recordings , films , photographs , software , and architectural works .

 Notice that Patents and copyrights are a very modern thing. Notice further that patents and copyrights in english law arose merely as a way for royalty to establish power, not because they improved anything.  Copyright in particular seems to have arisen out of a fear of the commoners becoming educated.  It was intended as a way to slow the spread of information so as to keep people unaware, and thus maintain the power of feudal structures.

The Copyright reference actually understates the case when describing what can be copyrighted these days.  Algorithms and observations of the natural world are some of the most egregious examples of things being copyrighted nowadays.

this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/2000patent.PNG is also an important point.  Patent and copyright law is a way in which western society can maintain pre-eminence above the rest of the world (except Japan).

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_patent_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law

I think patents are a trickier case.

First, because two people can independently invent something, patents have the potential to be much more of an infringement on liberty than a copyright.

Second, due to the large amount of non-commercial research (public and private), we have progress even in the absence of the commercial researchers. We should not grant 20 year patents for inventions that would have been developed in 5 years anyway. It's hard to deterime "what would have been", but I think we should be more stringent with the granting of patents.

Third, the patent office is completely overwhelmed, resulting in the granting of patents that shouldn't have been granted. While these patents can be challenged in court, that places a substantial cost on the people who would want to make use of these inventions. The patent office regularly grants invalid patents, which are then used by would-be monopolists to discourage competition. The patent office must be adequately funded for the job that it is given.

there is a small chance I may run for US Congress in 2010 due to my dissatisfaction with how much of an issue "intellectual property" (mostly copyrights and patents) is in national politics.

Seems like an odd single issue (or even primary motivation) on which to run for U.S. Congress. Is it that important in the overall set of issues that we hope our congressmen will deal with and handle wisely?

Nice chart from Wikipedia (I can't figure out how to embed it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg