I agree with President Bush on something.

Lawyers represent a major threat to our economy.

But I'm not worried about defense lawyers, or plaintiff's lawyers. I'm worried about the newer scourge of so-called "intellectual property" lawyers.

You won't find the phrase "intellectual property" in the Constitution. (It's often credited mainly to James Madison, left.) There, patents and copyrights are covered by a subsection of Article I, Section 8, whcih gives to the Congress power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

For limited times. To promote progress.

Because economic power has shifted, in our time, from our hands to our heads, and because technology is now able to move the product of our minds around the world at the speed of thought, American lawyers have done just what their British counterparts did two centuries ago. They've tried to make our economic leadership permanent through the language of law.

We all know the tools of this trade. They include the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the Bono Copyright Extension Act (that's Bono to the right with his first wife), and two judicial decisions that created software and business method patents. Today the perceived right to control what you once did extends to your life plus 75 years, and it's absolute. We're now literally destroying industries, like the model airplane industry, in the name of controlling copyright.

This is madness. Patents and copyrights are meant to promote science and the useful arts, not to destroy them.

These actions don't just turn the Constitution on its head. They turn American history on its head. American industry depended heavily on the theft of British trade secrets, as in Samuel Slater's Mill. Throughout the 19th century American publishers routinely ignored foreign copyrights, stealing from (among others) Charles Dickens.

The first international copyright treaty, in fact, didn't appear until the dawn of the 20th century. This has been extended and enhanced, but much has not changed since the time of Slater and Dickens. That is, where one stands on copyright depends heavily on where one sits. Asia today is as America was in Slater's time, and no more willing (despite what they say) to enforce copyright than the Founders' generation was to close the Pawtucket mill.

The dreams of the "intellectual property" lawyers, in other words, can't be realized. There is no way to make our temporary advantages permanent through the medium of the law.

The only people we're binding are ourselves. While we are bound, our economic competitors are unbound. And it's destroying your childrens' future.