Berserga, I think you are missing the point if Intellectual Property. This is a huge market for corporate lawyers in today's world. It is a strange time we live in. On one side, we have all the "Open Sourcers" as I like to refer to them. On the other side are the people making money. I cannot recall what the figures are for the cost of "branding" but if I am correct, it is in the millions for big name brands. If you spent millions on your particular brand, you would want to protect it too. Keep in mind, these companies are probably not saying no just to be miserly jerks. Think about it, someone builds a model, perfect to scale of a Ferrari. I turn around and take that model, then a model of say, a Porche, also to scale, and make a comic strip. First off, I make the Porsche win a race between the two by a quarter mile. Then, I make the Ferrari wrap around a tree, with a comment about it's ability to handle. How does this make a Ferrari look? Granted, this is a silly example, but I think it illustrates a good point. Try making a comic showing someone choking on a piece of bone inside a Big Mac, complete with the golden arches in the backdrop. Think if it gets around the net you won't have some quite unfriendly lawyers knocking on your front door? On your point that US companies should relax their take on copyright, do you think companies enjoy suing other companies? It costs good money to sue, money that companies would rather spend on R&D, or marketing. However, these are the same companies that are sued when some idiot spills a cup of hot coffee in their lap, or sues because there wasn't a warning label on the packaging that said "Eating 6 double cheeseburgers a week from our establishment will cause you to have a fat @$$." The whole buisness of suing begins with the common man trying to make a quick buck with little effort. I cannot blame a company, in the business of making money, to just roll over and allow anyone to use their logos, brands, trademarks, etc. in any way they please. Now going back to the Open Sourcer movement, we have many people who just feel everything should be free to use as they see fit. Now in theory, I think Open Source is great. We get many great things from this methodolgy. Examples like Linux, and Wings come to mind. (I don't necessarily mean Open Source as the literal open source. I am speaking of the mindset that you can build a quality product without the need for it to be costly.) The issue gets convulted on the general public though. You begin to have people who like to abuse the system. Is MP3 format bad, in and of itself? No. It is actually a really great format. It can be used to compress the large share of your audio collection in an easy to carry package. However, MP3s are abused by the public, who seem to believe it is okay that they can steal music "because music should be free." Yes I am generalizing, but to make a point. To further illustrate, I will ask, did you buy your copy of Poser? If so, you spent a nice chunk of change for it. Now how about the guy down the street from you who just visited some russian cracker site and got it for free? Is that fair? Should we ignore that, since hey, just because it's intellectual property, it shouldn't be kept from me just because I don't want to pay. I have probably ranted on for far too long now. I have also probably violated TOS in more than one way, so I will just wrap this up. I just hope you think about the point I am trying to make. Granted, I cannot understand how we have allowed our society to graduate more lawyers than doctors over the past couple of years, but this is the state of affairs in contemporary America. Whether this is right or wrong is for scholars of the future to decide.