What do you mean, "espousing a social-contract model" ? The authority to create a copyright law is explicity granted in the US Constitution for the precise purpose of a greater social good, "to promote the useful Arts and Sciences". So there is a contract there - congress is allowed to make copyright laws, but the rest of society gets promotion of the useful arts and sciences.
It's not an accidental addition; in Europe, copyrights and patents and other monopolies were handed out by Kings to reward friends, often with disregard to who the inventors and authors were. Our system gives the copyrights and patents to the authors and inventors, and it has to be for a limited time, and if the system does not promote the useful arts and sciences but instead a form of welfare or subsidy of certain interests, then you have to find authority to do it under some other part of law; it may in fact be unconstitutional.
Also, I find your remark about "doesn't mean that only the end-users get to dictate the terms of the contract" silly. Of course you realize like any literate person that a contract is a "meeting of the minds", that neither party gets to dictate the terms, but both parties have veto power and can not sign on.
I am on both sides of the contract, as a person who writes copyrighted computer code, and a person like the rest of the US who is restricted in copying other people's copyrighted work. I don't see the contract as a good one, and I'm willing to scrap the whole thing if it cannot be modified.
There is little evidence that the current state of copyright is helping the economy, the "Useful Arts and Sciences", or society as a whole. Not only is there ample reason to exclude the non-commercial distribution from it, I would sign on for eliminating the whole of copyright and patent law, the entire Title 17 and 35 (I think) of the US Code. Allowing the free copying of anything in a non-commercial way is nice little experiment we could run for a couple of years, and if starving silicon valley workers aren't forced to resort to canibalism, we ought to can the rest of the system too.
I'm not alone in pointing out the system is not function to incease the economy; numerous smart people over the years have said the same thing. Fredrich Hayek, whose work is generally considered staunchly right-wing and pro-capitalism and etc, said as much in "The Road to Serfdom" in the 1940s.
It's not an accidental addition; in Europe, copyrights and patents and other monopolies were handed out by Kings to reward friends, often with disregard to who the inventors and authors were. Our system gives the copyrights and patents to the authors and inventors, and it has to be for a limited time, and if the system does not promote the useful arts and sciences but instead a form of welfare or subsidy of certain interests, then you have to find authority to do it under some other part of law; it may in fact be unconstitutional.
Also, I find your remark about "doesn't mean that only the end-users get to dictate the terms of the contract" silly. Of course you realize like any literate person that a contract is a "meeting of the minds", that neither party gets to dictate the terms, but both parties have veto power and can not sign on.
I am on both sides of the contract, as a person who writes copyrighted computer code, and a person like the rest of the US who is restricted in copying other people's copyrighted work. I don't see the contract as a good one, and I'm willing to scrap the whole thing if it cannot be modified.
There is little evidence that the current state of copyright is helping the economy, the "Useful Arts and Sciences", or society as a whole. Not only is there ample reason to exclude the non-commercial distribution from it, I would sign on for eliminating the whole of copyright and patent law, the entire Title 17 and 35 (I think) of the US Code. Allowing the free copying of anything in a non-commercial way is nice little experiment we could run for a couple of years, and if starving silicon valley workers aren't forced to resort to canibalism, we ought to can the rest of the system too.
I'm not alone in pointing out the system is not function to incease the economy; numerous smart people over the years have said the same thing. Fredrich Hayek, whose work is generally considered staunchly right-wing and pro-capitalism and etc, said as much in "The Road to Serfdom" in the 1940s.