[OneWingedShark]

The idea behind copyright was simple – creativity would be catalyzed if individuals were given the exclusive right to profit from their works for a limited period of time. The law was supposed to strike a sensible balance between financial incentives for creators and social benefits.

Fixed; and that's one of the big problems: Copyrights/trademarks are essentially an unlimited period of time. (Thanks Disney. [/sarc])
The other is that there's a lot of organizations which are claiming intellectual property over things they shouldn't — I have a friend who left Google after they tried to "renegotiate" his contract to include a clause saying that everything he did, even in his free time, was their property.

[HiTech RedNeck]

This is what copyleft was supposed to fight. Funny seeing Google go after that kind of freedom to eliminate it.