A patent, by definition, is a grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time. When applying this concept to the internet, there is a lot of controversy behind its meaning. Can we really have the right to own things online that are shared with so many? The advocators of patents show that having the right to one's own property is part of America and should be granted no matter the resource. Patents can protect music, videos, t.v. shows, movies, and articles from being copied and distributed with no benefit to the original author or owner. The same idea applies to the physical DVDs and CDs so advocators argue that the same distribution laws should apply to digital copies.
Some issues with patents is that each website or file is only protected under the government it is patented by. So, hypothetically, if a person from another country got his or her hands on the patented merchandise, they could distribute it however they wanted to. Obviously, the internet connects the world and the people around it to each other, and therefore the stolen files could easily be found and returned un-patented to the US. Honestly, it seems foolish that there isn't a universal recognition of patents throughout the world. If protecting our merchandise and ideas is that important to the author (even though a patent is so ridiculously expensive), then it should provide protection in every country.
Personally, I think the idea of patents is extremely naive. People are spending hundreds of dollars to protect their intellectual property that can so easily be stolen on the internet. Thinking that things can be protected once you put them on a digital database is just not realistic to the world today. People will always find a way to illegally download things and honestly there is just no way to stop it. Hopefully, authors will start to realize that they are wasting their money on a hopeless cause and if they want to stay protected they shouldn't put their work on the internet. If you want to the world to have access to what you've made, you have to accept that the entire world will truly have unadulterated access.