Site-Specific Art Parks on Moral Ground: Distilling Old Whine in New Battles over the Visual Artists Rights Act

Having passed by unanimous vote at the Second Continental Congress, the new Constitution duly declared that "Congress shall have the power [t]o promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors rt]he exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Pursuant to that power, Congress enacted the Nation's first copyright law in 1790, intending to promote the artistic progress through a grant of exclusive monopoly for a limited time to the authors of new works. Since then, the United States has successfully urged invention and creation through the full commitment to a comprehensive set of federally enforced and administered intellectual property rights - including liberal economic incentives that grant exclusive and fully alienable limited-duration monopolies to creators and inventors.