One of the big problems between the "little man" and the "big corporation" is copyright law - only a copyright lawyer can do well with it, and the poor absolutely cannot afford to hire copyright lawyers. Having the court provide both with equal lawyers (for free) would level the playing field considerably. Having the goverment actively hunting down copyright violators and prosecuting them would do the exact opposite of what I want (that is, to encourage Free Culture).
Ah, yes. Now I follow. That makes much more sense. I shall mull it over, for I'm not sure what my opinion is.
My point about trying to define "more" and "less" control is that it doesn't paint a valid picture. But more control can also be exactly what you said for "less" but with one more stipulation. "less" is not inherantly better than "more," it depends entirely on what the starting point is. It just wasnt' an effective means of showing what you mean, is all.
As for how much was adequate, more controls are necessary now than were before.
To go back to Jefferson, he envisioned the US as a loose collective of nearly autonomous states, where the primary factor was the gentleman farmer, and where land was THE primary commodity for most businesses of any type.
Little of that is true these days. The states aren't even what you can call "semi-autonomous." They have independent powers, but those are superceded by a central federal government. There are very few privately held farms anymore, and even if you stretch that to "small business owners" you're stretching a description of our modern society. Most people work for someone else and do well that way. The laborer is a more significant voting block when they actively participate. And land isn't nearly as precious. Many, many business don't own ANY land or real estate. They rent their location and do extremely well with it. Their primary commodity is intellectual property -- to wit, in most cases, the data on their hard drives. Thus we need more protection of that property than 200 years ago.
Now, this doesn't do anything to the previous discussion: are we adequate now or too harsh. All it does is give my response on that one question: protections 200 years ago are not sufficient for today's society. I would probably extend the same argument to 100 or even 50 years ago. In my opinion, the demands of IP protection 20 years ago are what they are now. NOt knowing exactly when laws changed though, I'm not ready to defend or decry the differences in protection then and now -- I suspect that some aspects are better and others worse.