The failure to renew was an empirical, market signal about the value that copyright owners themselves placed on copyright. The renewal rates also showed a consistent difference in renewal rates for classes of works. The lowest renewal rates (0.4 percent) were for technical drawings, lectures, sermons, and other oral works. The highest renewal rate was for motion pictures (74 percent). Music was 48 percent and books only 7 percent. Our current one-size-fits-all approach ignores this significant data about how copyright owners have themselves valued copyright. Based on this evidence, the correct term of copyright should vary depending on the type of material being protected, with books getting a shorter term than motion pictures.

Even with a term of copyright of only fourteen years (the original term in the States), most books would not be renewed, because most books are no longer worth much after that period of time. Failing to let them come into the public domain only makes them inaccessible—that is, invisible. A book can have an immense cultural value for centuries past the point at which it's already anemic financial value has passed. The obscene copyright term now in place serves no financial gain, and yet manages to rob us nonetheless.

The most damaging consequence of the movement to turn culture into private property is the largely successful change in attitude toward creativity and copying. Creative people are supposedly those who do not copy or imitate others. As we just saw, this is false; creative people must copy and must imitate others. Treating transformative copying as theft, as laziness, or as being non-creative is counter to human nature. All learning is social; copying is an essential form of social learning. Our copyright laws must be changed to reflect this fact.

Emphasis mine; this is perhaps the most distressing part of the conversations around SOPA and PIPA and similar bills put forth by the entertainment industry. It is inconceivable that a group of people whose primary livelihood depends on remakes could misunderstand this most basic element of creativity. More likely that they recognize the value that such a ruling could infer on their own back catalog. Put another way: copying in order to make anew is not lazy. But relying on revenue from copies of your own work most certainly is.

In view of the conceptual changes that are taking place it is hardly helpful to continue using in connection with housing problems words that are firmly anchored in the cultures of days gone by; they can only mislead us in our present search for better solutions. "Apartments," "row houses," "single-family houses," "yard," "garden," "garbage," "parking lot," "living room," "kitchen," "dining room," "bedroom," "bathroom," are all heavily loaded words that make ay number of irrelevant images spring to mind. Designer and user alike may imagine that these words stand for something immutable, though in fact they are just names for the familiar.

Until one stops using popular or generalized words to describe specific objects and events, one will continue to be deceived by the associations with them and will fail to arrive at the essential functional aspect of things and places that is the planner's actual concern in problem-analysis and design.

I start nearly every design project with words. Words define the problem and its scope, and they pave the way towards a solution. Names are especially important, as what you call things will prescribe how you approach them. One trick I've found that often works is to look to vocabulary from another domain; so, if you're designing a bedroom, use words from landscape architecture; or if you're designing a book, use cooking words. The end result may or may not be useful, but the exploration itself is often illustrative.

This is the crucial question in any design process, for countless different views of the problem are possible. The most fruitful aspects to consider, can we but identify them, are those most deeply related to the structure of the problem. The sense in which the structure given by the grouping of parts can help us solve a problem is illustrated beautifully in the words of Chuangtzu, who lived at the time of Plato, put into the mouth of a Taoist butcher:

"A good cook changes his chopper once a year—because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month, because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. By this means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room."

I love this. Think about the problems you are trying to solve. Look closely—look at how all the pieces fit together, and then see where there is room for you to insert your blade.