In today's ever-accelerating world, we constantly find ourselves in a vortex of vague and complicated legal issues. Many of these refer specifically to something we encounter every time we listen to a song, look at a photograph or read a book⎯copyright. It seems that all these new controversies about copyrights and copyright infringement may be exaggerated or irrelevant. However, these copyright issues are neither irrelevant nor exaggerated, although it is certainly worth noting this excessive attention constantly paid to it. The fact that copyrights are creating such an upheaval should not be attributed to excessive exaggeration. We should instead see this as a sign that copyrights, as they are currently maintained, need inspection and perhaps revision. Our overemphasis on claiming something as our property has caused copyright to act contrary to its original purpose. To better understand what the initial intention of copyright was, we need to look at where it is first expressed in our society. Apparently, copyrights have been in place in our society since the Constitution was written. While there were different views on how best to implement it, ultimately it was Thomas Jefferson's notion of copyright that was most clearly incorporated into the Constitution. In it “…awards Congress the authority to 'promote the progress of the sciences and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries'” (Lethem 63). This inclusion of a copyright for authors and inventors had a clear purpose: to create an incentive for the mass of typically ordinary people to create and innovate. Securing a Pass...... middle of paper ......ss.Carolan, Michael S. "Constructing the 'Pure' Inventor: Individual, Collective, and Corporate Authorship in Patent Law." New genetics and society. 27.4: (301-310). Helpprin, Mark “Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto.” Harper: HarperCollins Publishers.Litman, Jessica “Creative Reading.”Khan, B. Zorina. “The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790–1920.” Issue: Cambridge University Press.Lethem, Jonathan. “The ecstasy of influence: a plagiarism”. Harper's Magazine.The Founders' Constitution, Volume 3, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, Document 12http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.htmlThe University of Chicago PressThe Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh. 20 vols. Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905.