How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability (PDF) over the course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what social norms permit is so great now that "we are, technically speaking, a nation of infringers."

Tehranian's paper points out just how pervasive copyright has become in our lives. Simply checking one's e-mail and including the full text in response could be a violation of copyright. So could a tattoo on Tehranian's shoulder of Captain Caveman—and potential damages escalate when Tehranian takes off his shirt at the university pool and engages in public performance of an unauthorized copyrighted work.

Singing "Happy Birthday" at a restaurant (unauthorized public performance) and capturing the event on a video camera (unauthorized reproduction) could increase his liability, and that's to say nothing of the copyrighted artwork hanging on the wall behind the dinner table (also captured without authorization by the camera). Tehranian calculates his yearly liability at $4.5 billion.

And all of this infringement could easily be done without even engaging in "wrong" behaviors like P2P file-sharing. Tehranian wants to make clear how such copyright issues don't simply affect those operating in the grey or black zones of the law; they affect plenty of ordinary people who aren't doing anything that they consider to be illegal, immoral, or even a little bit naughty.

The "vast disparity between copyright law and copyright norms" simply highlights the need for effective copyright reform. Since the 1976 Copyright Act, when all creative works automatically gained copyright protection without the need for registration, our lives have been awash in the copyrighted materials of other people. The advent of digital technology means not only that such works are simpler to use and to share, but that content owners for the first time have a realistic shot at enforcing their maximum rights.

That has led to plenty of bad press for copyright holders, as in the case of the "terminally ill Mexican immigrant on welfare" whose case Tehranian handled when the man was sued by the RIAA for his son's alleged file-swapping. More serious than such isolated cases, though, is the fact that the law currently gives so much power (even if much of it is not used) to content owners that it risks eroding respect for the necessary and even important uses of copyright law.

What better way could there be to create a nation of constant lawbreakers than to instill in that nation a contempt for its own laws? And what better way to instill contempt than to hand out rights so broad that most Americans simply find them absurd?