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Copyright laws are out of touch with reality. That’s the assertion of an extensive paper written by University of Utah professor John Tehranian titled: Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Norm/Law Gap. It’s a fascinating read. He describes a hypothetical day for a law professor and demonstrates how he violates “the letter of copyright law” 83 times with potential fines totaling $12.45 million. It includes such innocuous activities as singing “Happy Birthday” to a friend. While his paper uses a law professor as the protagonist, a similar scenario could easily apply to any of us.

There is more on Tehranian’s paper and how copyright laws are turning us all into softened criminals at Boing Boing. As that post points out, these hypothetical violations do not even include the more publicized acts of sharing music or other digital file sharing on P2P networks.

In addition to making us criminals, our archaic intellectual property laws are killing creativity. The link is to a presentation by Stanford Professor Larry Lessig presenting his thoughts on why copyright law needs to be changed in this digital age.

Many agree that something has to be done about this copyright problem, but it is difficult to envision how such a complex problem will be addressed and by whom.