Comment Re:Information takes Effort. (Score 2) 528
This is an argument that may convince somebody, but falls apart as soon as you put any deep thought into it.
Here is the problem: you cannot assign ownership of something to somebody just because they created it. You have to think carefully about that statement before you dismiss it. I'll restate it. The creator of a work does not wholly own it.
At all times, all human beings are building on the work of our ancestors. No matter what you make, it is partly owned by the human race. Saying, "I made it, so I own it." is a huge slap in the face to every colleague, every teacher, every book, every road, every building, every social structure, your parents, your grand-parents and so on. Nothing that you have ever created in your life was created solely by your own efforts.
Copyright should be a mechanism to encourage people to push the boundaries of human knowledge. I don't think our current system does that. Even worse, we have other mechanisms that do the same job and do it better (for example, the NSF). So why do we need copyrights?