OK, 1) the giving of protection after the life of the author was actually to benefit the author's family, i.e., author writes a book in his later years, dies, and then only the publisher got anything from the book because copyright died with the author. The extension past the author's life was to benefit the family so they got SOMEthing. I'll concede that corporations have had a big hand in extending the copyright length. I do not think you are necessarily wrong in saying copyright length should be shortened, but at least you articulated a reason which is 95% more than other people do. 2) The situation is not at all similar with patents though. If anything, patent term has been shortened in the last 12 years. Specifically, the patent is only good from its earliest priority date (usually the filing date, but may be earlier if it claims an earlier priority date from an earlier filing). It used to be that patents were enforceable for 17 years after it issued which is what caused people to keep filing application after application as the earlier one was about to issue because the patentee got a fresh set of 17 year protection from each application as it issued (these are the submarine patents). Now, however, and since 1995, no matter how many applications are filed, the term starts from the earliest filing date and only runs 20 years.
Lastly, people complain that it is too easy to get a patent. Do you have one? Have you gone through the process of getting one? Because I have - in fact it's what I do day in and day out and it is not nearly as easy as everyone thinks. In fact, the Supreme Court just made it harder than ever earlier this year with the KSR case. Yes, there are many patents out there that would get invalidated because the examiners in the late 90's and early 2000's were inundated and didn't have the tools to effectively conduct prior art searches, but the PTO has significantly cracked down on what is allowable and are pursuing peer review programs to put all available prior art in front of the Examiner.
In context of the Burst case, the judge invalidated some of the claims, but some of them survived, which means even what Apple could find that may have been prior art apparently wasn't enough. Sometimes, and I am not conceding that this is the case, hindsight is 20/20 and what seems obvious now, may not really have been.
People think that to get a patent that someone has to invent a completely revolutionary idea and that's simply not the case - the patent system is supposed to reward innovation by granting patents on improvements. Baby steps are patentable - they don't have to be for, and shouldn't be, giant leaps forward. If they were, no one would develop improvements since they couldn't assure protection of their invested time and energy.
and Steve Jobbs just wanted to get it over with... People get so jealous that iTunes is the way they don't have to go to the music store or to go and rent movies anymore that they make stupid disputes "faster than real-time"? Maybe because