Sensitive documents used to be stored for release after 30 years, 60 years, or very occasionally 100 years, when the original need to conceal the document will have gone. Now, if the document is known or guessed to exist, it may be asked for. The secure solution is to make sure the document does not exist. This means our country’s history is being shredded.

There are cases where plagarism can deprive the rightful owner of revenue or other value. With the passage of time, it becomes less and less likely that any serious case can be bought (with the strange exception of the Peter Pan copyright, which really ought not to exist). However, the threat that any old document may have copyright reserved on the original copy, and legal actions such as the case against the annagram Underground map, or the use of the Red Cross trademark in video games is stopping the copying or circulation of anything that might have a copyright or trademark. On the net in particular, that is tantamount to destroying the document itself.

There should be clear limits to copyright law. Anything that is older than a certain date ought to be exempt unless there is clear evidence otherwise. There ought to be a requirement to show the plagarist has knowlingly copied, and in doing so has bought significant harm to the original author.