The world of 1906 was hardly perfect ? I wouldn?t want to live then. And the 1909 statute was full of its own boondoggles and industry grabs. But if one looks back at these transcripts and compares them to today?s hearings ? with vacuous rantings from celebrities and the bloviation of bad economics and worse legal theory from one industry representative after another ? it is hard not to feel a sense of nostalgia. In 1900, it appears, we were better at understanding that copyright was a law that regulated technology, a law with constitutional restraints, that property rights were not absolute and that the public would not automatically be served by extending rights out to infinity.