The King James version was paid for by all of his subjects, in one form or another, who would have included the ancestors of the American colonists as well as the earliest colonists who relied on one or more English translation before the King James or Authorized Version came out and became standard in the Church of England and, as it happened, dissenting churches of the time an later in England and around the Empire including what would become the Unites States after 1776 and Canada after 1867, In short the American colonists DID pay for the Authorized Version because it was authorized before the revolution and in use in British North America for over a century and a half when the American Revolution took place.

And yes. the Americans borrowed from the ancient Greeks and Romans as they worked on their new republic just as they took on Magna Charta and other documents laws, precedents and practices from England.

Keep in mind that the American Revolution as in many ways a civil war. English vs English one group in North America demanding no more than an Englishman of similar standing would have demanded and received in England. Also that they had considerable support in the Commons at the time while facing yet more opposition to their cause in the Lords and among supporters of George III. Among the supporters in the Commons were both Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger who are remembered now as great reformers of Parliament and the rights of the Commons over the Lords and the monarch.

In some respects that Christianity took with it huge aspects of Hebrew/Jewish beliefs and customs which exist into today as their Messiah intended to reform Judaism not break from it as is evident within the Gospels. In some respects the nacient Christians were drive off, out of the synagogue after 67 CE by Jews/Hebrews who disagreed with their view of Jesus as Messiah.

The American Revolution entrenched basic beliefs of English common and civil law and the concept of Free Speech which the Pitts and their successors would take back in England and reenforce and reestablish there. One fed the other in spite of some mutual hostility that continued until The Great War.

Dickens and others from England and outside the United States would continue to complain about Americans stealing their work in one form or another until the United States finally signed onto the Berne Convention in the mid 1960s. But complain as Dickens did he didn’t turn down what were enormous fees in those days to tour and speak and complain in the United States making more that way than he would on his books in his lifetime from the copyrights either he or his publishers back in blight would.

The problem isn’t that the U.S borrowed or plagiarized from Europe and the UK but it’s that the SHORT terms of things like copyright and patents have been extended beyond all recognition of the purposes they were to serve on both sides of the pond. Nor did it stop England from plagiarizing, in their turn, constitutional and political ideas from the United States and adapting them for their own uses.

The extension and corruption of copyright and patent law are hardly American ideas alone nor are the Americans soley responsible for them. Europeans can take their fair share of the blame as can the British.

The problem here isn’t necessarily anything the United States government has done in and of itself it’s the unquestioning acceptance of legislators in the United States, Canada, Europe, the UK and elsewhere that what Hollywood says is happening with ‘piracy’ mostly greased by monstrous campaign contributions no matter where this issue has come up.

The problem here is a seriously flawed and unworkable pair of bills that simply will not stop or even dent the problem they claim to be fighting but will cost more in liberty and freedom that is really worth losing over this so called problem. And England isn’t exactly a font of innocence and wisdom on that score either In fact, in terms of even what’s currently proposed in the United States the England is probably worse. Nor, for that matter, is Canada.

As a Canadian getting to live “between” the UK and the US I’m not sure which I dislike more. Self-congratulatory and self-serving Americans or self-congratulatory and self-serving Brits. There is so little that differentiates the attitudes from either country.

Where I think most of us agree is that culture cannot and ought not be locked into walled gardens for the entertainment industry whether the particular aspect of said industry is located in Hollywood, New York, London, Toronto or Vancouver.

Culture, like so much else, wants to and demands to be free. A short, preferably non-renewable copyright grant (monopoly) of, say, the original 14 years is acceptable. Seven years would be better, IMHO. Lifetime + 70 years is totally and completely unacceptable as it becomes welfare for the entertainment industry and the artist be damned.

And bills to prob up an industry than will not adapt to market changes is abhorrent particularly when it violates the US Bill of Rights and breaks the internet as it tries to do that. The latter kinda like the UK already does. Not that these industries cannot. Just that they will not. They’re either too lazy or too frightened to do that so off they run to their bought and paid for legislators in Washington and London to protect them.