A good and well linked source I like to follow is at http://techdirt.com

Basically, current copyright law seeks to continuously pay a producer for work they did one time, often many years ago. This makes it more of a welfare system than its (at least in the US) intended purpose of 'providing incentive for the creation of science and the arts'. It disables the creative public from consuming artistic media and producing more artistic media by putting monopolistic barriers around the simple act of re-using an idea.

Every person ought to be well aware the problems with monopolies of any sort. Unchecked monopolies on oil in the beginning of its era in Pennsylvania destroyed competition and caused arbitrary price fixing, which is a burden only on the tax-paying consumer. Monopolies in telephone with AT&T did the same thing in its day. Monopolies on an idea have the ability to be even more destructive, for the added reason that you might have to pay just to express a thought. The early founding fathers actually thought of this and placed a restriction of 'limited' monopolies for copyright and patent. The limit was intended to be a set time, set to reasonably economic limitations, and any copyrighted or patented work needed to be registered to receive protection.

As it stands, laws tend to create a 'creativity tax' that goes not to the actual artistic producer, but to a central agency that claims it will find and reimburse that artist for their work. I specifically use the word claims since just searching for 10 seconds on Google or Bing would show possibly hundreds of documented instances of this simply not being the case. Canada has a blank media 'piracy' tax, which incumbent industry wants to extend even to things like the iPod. It was just in the news this past week about how that same Canadian industry admitedly owes billions to artists it 'can't find', including names like Mariah Carrey and Bon Jovi.

Patents are the other side of the same detracting coin. A patent creates an inherrent 'entry tax' to incumbent industry as the current model stands. Patents in themselves have the capability of being quite helpful and useful, when granted properly. But in an age where Amazon can get a patent on only clicking once to purchase something from its website, you begin to see where the hazards are in its current usage. Patents are intended, from the original constitution, to be granted on 'useful' and 'non-obvious to those skilled in the trade' inventions. If you ever hear someone say, "oh my, I (a person who actually works in the field) would have never thought of that!" then that invention would have a likely incentive towards patenting.

With these both acting as taxes instead of incentives for the original creator, it causes a problem. No person will ever honestly tell you that more taxing helps creative incentive. Taxing businesses does not cause them to hire or produce more. Taxing people does not help them to live wealthier lives. Taxes are always a necessary economic evil that a government needs to operate for its intended purpose of protecting and serving the people. For a good reference to what happens when taxes are not used for protecting the people, just look at the reasons for the French Revolution.

I won't even begin to get into the problems with current language involving these two things... That is an entirely different discussion.

tl;dr, Current copyright and patent law is more like a tax on the populace than an incentive for the creator. edit This entire post is pretty much the "tl;dr" of the whole discussion...