Reflecting on my over thirty years in the copyright field, this chapter highlights why so many copyright laws are failing. They are failing due to blind adherence to an ideology that insists that unauthorized copying should by default be infringing, and that limitations and exceptions must be narrowly construed. These views – often put forth by those who profess their love for authors – are both ahistorical and inhibit creativity. My principal suggestion is that copyright law must be empirically fitted to the way that people actually create, and not according to the false belief that strong laws are necessary to encourage creativity. If the law is developed in this way, we will see that copyright laws must be flexible because creativity is inherently flexible. There should be one, and only one, inquiry, free of biases: does the work, or an unauthorized use of the work, further creativity and learning? The rest is a distraction.