> I just thought of a good topic for your Jefferson site.  According to a
> recent Cnet article, Jefferson was opposed to Copyright law being
> put into the Constitution.  
> 	 Cnet Article
> 
> Could you perhaps elaborate on this?

Essentially, the statement in the article you cite appears to be not entirely true.
Jefferson did support the right to patents and copyrights, though he seemed to waver
on the question at first.  

Jefferson was in France when the Constitution was debated, and wrote to Madison early on
about the lack of a Bill of Rights in the new Constitution, including the following
remarks on "monopolies" (a term which included what we would call patents and copyrights).

"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without
the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection 
against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and 
unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of 
fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations." --Thomas 
Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:387 

Notice he refers to a "restriction against monopolies," which presumably must be 
distinguished from a prohibition against monopolies.  Later, in further discussion with 
Madison, he suggested that the value of limited monopolies was too doubtful as opposed 
to their general suppression.

"The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, 
which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of fourteen 
years; but the benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to 
that of their general suppression." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 
7:98 

But then finally, he recommended just such a limited provision to Madison.

"I like [the declaration of rights] as far as it goes, but I should have
been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and
additions would have pleased me......
Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in
literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not
exceeding __ years, but for no longer term, and no other purpose..." --Thomas
Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:450

In addition,. Jefferson wrote the following much later on:

"It would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors... It would be curious... if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of
an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and
stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all
others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called
an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it
to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because
every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me,
receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his
taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely
spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual
instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like
fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then
cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive
right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue
ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according
to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from
anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right,
but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson,
1813. ME 13:333

Thus, Jefferson indicates that a free society MAY, if it chooses, give such exclusive
rights as it wishes and for its own convenience.  But such a right is not a "natural
right," i.e., it is a choice of a free society, not something that an individual can
claim as an inalienable right.

The Cnet article begins with this statement:

"Thomas Jefferson opposed copyright, but it's in the United States Constitution 
anyway. He couldn't settle it with the founding fathers then, and he wouldn't 
settle it with Edgar Bronfman, Jr. now. Anyway, the issue is profits, not 
What's Right."

Obviously, the article suggests that Jefferson opposed copyright protection
in the new Constitution, but the Founding Fathers put it in there anyway.  This
is not quite in agreement with the statements in the above cited letters.  Jefferson 
finally ended up RECOMMENDING that such protection be included in a Bill of
Rights.

Therefore it appears that the statement in the article suggesting that Jefferson
opposed the inclusion of copyright protection in the U.S. Constitution is not entirely
correct.  Jefferson at first was doubtful, but then recommended that limited protections
be included.