US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:

> [The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

it never should have had any place, it never made sense, it's always created more problems than it solved

We've entered many new ages of how information is created, used, and distributed over the last 250 years. There's nothing special enough about this new era which justifies throwing out the old ideas of moral and economic rights of an author.