OverRegulation

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One tendency we see these days with respect to copyright and intellectual property is over-regulation. People are affraid of lawyers and add byzantine licencing terms. Countries create complex laws full of exceptions and loops and provisions. But the extra legalese does not simplify the problem -- it exacerbates it. And so we keep on feeding the lawyers...

: I find that one of the main problems here is complexity, and more specifically, the idea that the law should be precise and try to cover most eventualities in a logically consistent and objective manner. There are so many potential eventualities that this leads to a lot of verbiage, which leads to compexity. In my opinion, the solution is a conscious emphasis on simplicity and a realization that there is sometimes a tradeoff between comprehensiveness, objectivity, and simplicity. I think another component of the solution is MinimalistLaw. -- BayleShanks

A complaint of OverRegulation in the United States today puts one squarely in a particular political corner that may be unintentional. Most calls for reducing regulation in America today come from those who wish to open up wider tax loopholes for the very wealthy, those that want to give credit card companies more freedom to jerk around their customers, those that want to give insurance companies more freedom to deny health care benefits to more working people and those that want to give all companies more freedom to poison anyone they feel like as much as they want. Although there may very well be many other places in the law where there are too many regulations, when one speaks about OverRegulation politically, that's the corner you're putting yourself in and the company you're choosing to keep. This is not necessarily justified, but it is the political reality. The regulatory schema of American federal and state governments, largely established in the seventies and drastically revised in the eighties and sometimes (welfare, etc.) in the nineties, is under a savage counterattack.

Often times a regulatory body has means to assist those that regulations burden, under-utilized and under-publicized means. I work in a very highly regulated field - state care of neglected and abused children. On the one hand it's enormously frustrating and hair-pullingly bureaucratic. On the other hand, the idea of the government taking care of children is one that should give any citizen of any government the heebie-jeebies and a high degree of regulation and caution is certainly warranted. -- JasonCorley

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OverRegulation

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