And what reason is that, pray tell?

Actually, copyright is the right to prohibit other people from making copies, as well as from doing some other things, but that's not precisely where the name originates from.

The right to make copies is the right of free speech, and it inherently exists in everyone, and applies to everything. I'm not Shakespeare, and I don't have a copyright on his work, but I can make copies of his plays by exercising my free speech right.

I am not Vellmont, the poster to whom you were replying earlier, but I am a copyright lawyer, and there's nothing I like more than arguing about copyright law. Seriously, it's an actual hobby for me, not just a job.

That's an acceptable outcome.

Copyright isn't meant to maximize creation and publication, nor is it meant to benefit all authors. Rather, it is meant to maximize the public benefit enjoyed by both on the one hand maximizing creation and publication of works that would not be created and published but for copyright, but also on the other hand, minimizing protection so that works are in the public domain as rapidly and as fully as possible.

I would love to sculpt the Moon into a piece of art, but the amount of copyright I'd require to make it economically worth my while is tremendous. Our society, through our government, appears to have decided that we are all literally better off without me doing it, given what I would require from everyone. I'm still free to do it at my own expense, for less reward than I deem necessary, but no one is obligated to cater to my needs, and no one does. And that's acceptable, just as it is in your case.

Much, though not all, piracy indicates the level of copyright that we ought to have, and if that is too little to sustain you, then that's an acceptable consequence. If it turns out that you're too important to let go, people will willingly choose to respect copyright more in order to do that.

No.

The Copyright Act defines infringement as unauthorized violation of any the exclusive rights of copyright. The making of new copies, such as by downloading, is such a right.

Assuming a copyright and lack of permission or exception, yes you are.

If it's copyrighted, if the downloads are made without permission, and there is no applicable copyright exception, then yes, it's illegal to download it.

Suppose that you live in a place with a zoning code that requires each house to have a white picket fence. You paint your fence black. Is that evil? I would suggest that that law is probably amoral. It may be useful for some reason, or not, but one color of fence is not more or less evil than another color.

Copyright is the same sort of deal. It's meant to be an economic incentive to get authors to create and publish certain works, for the benefit of the public. Violating it may be selfish and may be self-defeating in the long run, but it's not evil, and copyrights and respecting copyrights are not morally good. Copyright is entirely utilitarian.

Assuming the normal case of a downloader issuing some command to the server which results in a new copy being made, the downloader has made the copy.

Now, if someone rooted your computer and used it to make copies without your involvement, then you'd have an argument, but that's not really what we're looking at usually.

If it helps, think of two people talking on the phone, the first reading a book, and the second writing it down. The reader isn't making the copy; if the writer secretly refuses to write, no new copy is produced. The writer does need the aid of the reader to make the copy, but he can't pretend that the blame entirely lies on the reader.

And remember -- a copy is defined in the law as a material object -- it can't be sent over the network.

No, that's a correct interpretation of the Copyright Act. That's how fucked up the actual law is; it's worse than you had apparently imagined it to be.

Downloading involves making copies, and unauthorizedly making copies of copyrighted works is infringing, unless there's an applicable exception to copyright. This is well-established.

A copy is defined in the Copyright Act (17 USC 101) as a material object in which a copy is fixed. A hard drive is a material object, a flash drive is a material object, RAM is a material object. But data coming in over the network is not a material object. The downloader causes that data to be written to some sort of storage medium on his end, thereby making a new copy. The person on the other end of the connection is in trouble too, but it is clear in the statute, and settled in the caselaw, that downloading can be infringing.

That's like saying that murdering someone with a gun is no more murder than murdering them with a knife or with poison. All of the things you mention are also infringing, if of copyrighted works and without permission. There may be applicable exceptions, but there just as easily might not be.

It didn't. In fact, if you read the Sony case, you'll see that the Court expected that not all home taping of TV would even be a fair use. All that mattered was that there was enough possibility of VCR recording being legal sometimes that copyright didn't require that the technology be banned altogether.

It's a public performance, and would be prima facie infringing.

There are no laws against "piracy" per se; rather there are laws against copyright infringement, which downloading commonly is.

The statute doesn't require infringement en masse, nor does it require selling them for a profit. Perhaps you'd like to read it? It's 17 USC 501. It refers to other sections, in particular 17 USC 106, and 101.

No it's not. The correct legal term would be copyright infringement.

No, any copyright infringement which meets the prerequisites of 17 USC 506 is a crime. For example, if you willfully download a work in an infringing manner, and that work has a retail value of over $1,000 (easily doable with certain computer programs), that's a criminal infringement.

This is the first, and perhaps only thing in your post that's correct.

When you download, you necessarily make a new copy. If the work is copyrighted, and you lack permission or an applicable exception to copyright, you're infringing.

Well, actually it's the Supreme Judicial Court, or SJC.

It's not the ripping software, it's the digital recording function, i.e. the ability to write to disk.

Here's what the court said in the RIAA v Diamond Multimedia case: (internal citations removed)

Unlike digital audio tape machines, for example, whose primary purpose is to make digital audio copied recordings, the primary purpose of a computer is to run various programs and to record the data necessary to run those programs and perform various tasks. The legislative history is consistent with this interpretation of the Act's provisions, stating that "the typical personal computer would not fall within the definition of 'digital audio recording device,'" because a personal computer's "recording function is designed and marketed primarily for the recording of data and computer programs." Another portion of the Senate Report states that "[i]f the 'primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a 'digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

So it really depends on what else the car's ability to write to disk is both primarily used for, and what it is primarily marketed for. The latter is probably worse for them; even if the car happens to be writing map or diagnostic information to disk, probably ripping CDs is what is mainly being advertised.

No. Here's the relevant part of the ruling, quoting the Senate report on the bill:

"[i]f the `primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a `digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

What information does the car's system digitally record other than music? That it might display digital information, or play digital information isn't relevant, since those don't involve the recording function.

Computers record lots of stuff to their hard drives. Some of it is music, but the ability to write to disk isn't primarily designed for digital music, nor primarily marketed for that.

Well, there are ways to do it with CDs you don't own where you will be protected from legal trouble. But in practice, it never comes up.

No, the car doesn't count.

Let's look at a bit more of the relevant language in the statute:

It's what the primary purpose of the digital recording function is (or is marketed as) that matters. We disregard the car and the rest of the machine altogether.