Funny. I just so happen to be wearing a Dylan shirt that I got last time I saw him play.

Thanks for the pointer to the interview.

So on the one hand Bob Dylan freely admits that he depends on the public domain, and describes how he bases his HUGELY derivative art directly on other people's works whose copyrights have expired or on creative works that were never copyrighted.

On the other hand, he is front and center on the "copyrights should last forever" bandwagon, which seeks to make it illegal for the next generation of songwriters to do what he takes for granted. He actually went to Washington to lobby Congress to make it illegal for future songwriters to practice his own craft, an effort which came to pass in the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

Then he lionizes the very "folk tradition" that he is so openly in favor of extinguishing. Apparently Dylan sees no disconnect between the fact that he has the right to write new songs to Carter Family songs and make money on them without being sued, and the fact that because of his efforts some future genius songwriter who thinks up and records new words to a Dylan song will only be able to do so at the risk of being sued by Dylan's grandchildren's copyright lawyers.

Fucking Hypocrite. Bob Dylan is NOT one of the good guys.