The piece is about two great men with great ideas who were way ahead of their time.
Jefferson, of course, is a hero to most IP scholars for his famous passage:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation....
So - all of this is to say that there is much that is wonderful about the USA, especially its great instinct to defend freedom of speech and the pursuit of excellence.
There is even much that is good about its copyright law. Let's hope that Canada can find the good aspects of American copyright law and work them into our own law.
And in case anyone is wondering, no - I have not been invited to Ambassador Wilkins' 4th of July garden party.
Happy Anniversary to the City of Quebec and to the USA!
HK
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