Comment Re:Nearly all laws are (Score 1) 213
I'm not philosopher, but one of the reasons our society works is that there is general agreement that we own the product of our labors. In many cases we transfer that ownership to our employers for exchange of a steady income. (...) When it comes to stopping piracy I don't understand how anyone can be against creators having ownership and control over their creations.
I have two problems with this. 1) Individual creators don't really stand to gain much by stopping piracy. It's mostly the entities to whom the creations are transferred to, meaning individuals are (typically) benefited indirectly at best. 2) our society, for the longest time, did *not* put a price tag on culture. Music, knowledge, the arts. The industry worked by means other than preventing sharing. Pay extra for an authentic original painting, or for a live performance of music, or a play. Pay composers beforehand to support their ability to create, instead of restricting other composers afterwards. Then when easy copying via the printing press came along, we invented "copyright" so that a few presses could monopolize on certain materials...and it went downhill from there. The original intent was to secure a limited, opt-in monopoly over copyrighted works for the author, but this has essentially ballooned into an unlimited, opt-out monopoly over copyrighted works for the MAFIAA. I can maybe support granting a limited-time monopoly over original work, but no man is an island; that "original work" belongs largely to the human race.
