[llreader]

How's this?

As an American living overseas (and a voter), I think the US government should dedicate less resources to lobbying other countries to comply with our interpretation of copyright and more resources to ensuring that we comply with existing US copyright law in the United States, which includes fair use, public libraries, and limited copyright terms. Have your participants looked beyond issues of enforcement of their own intellectual property rights to address the issue of orphaned works? This is a growing and important problem, and apparently there are no provisions for moving these works to the public domain, perhaps with a compensatory fund if authors come forward at a later date. I hope that, in general, your "Special 301" process makes an extra effort to be aware of the rights of everyone involved in copyrights and their use, and not just focus on ways to extract more revenue from existing copyrights.

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review (http://hbr.org/2010/01/wanted-a-firs...nnovation/ar/1), Edmund Phelps and Leo Tilman identify a stifling IP regime in the United States as an important factor that is smothering innovation and economic growth.

While some specific business interests may stand to profit from stricter and more onerous limits on the use of intellectual property, Americans as a whole would benefit from less punishment and more recognition of the rights of the consumer in US copyright law.

In the future, it would be much more helpful (and fair) if this process was transparent and open to public scrutiny, since this is an issue that affects every citizen of the United States.

Sincerely,