Beam Me Up Scotty (Score 1)

My point is that you cannot justify that all software and other intellectual works should be free by the ease of which they can be copied. That makes no more sense than saying that theft should be legal, as long as you can pull it off without breaking a sweat.

And I am wholesale against patents, software or otherwise. The lack of patents promotes better competition between companies, as it prevents producers from resting on the laurels of a killer product. However, it is imperative for any country that wishes to foster innovation and productivity to guarantee the rights of the producers to their products. Because intellectual works like books, music, and software can be copied with ease, it is necessary to enforce copyrights. If people have nothing to guarantee that they will be able to benefit from their work (assuming it is marketably viable), what the hell makes you think they will pursue such avenues?

Enforcement is the main problem. Especially on the Internet and in the global economy. That's why you have the reactionary thrusts by our government and various private sector interests that border on digital fascism. We've gone from one end of the spectrum, akin to the lawless wild west, and are heading to the other, some Orwellian nightmare where we sport digital thought police processers running the latest version of Windoze CE. So as
we decide exactly how information will be shared between people without trampling the rights of the authors, it is important to vehemently oppose these repulsive affronts to our freedom guised under the tag "protecting proprietary information."

These things are hard to resolve. Throwing up our hands and tossing intellectual property rights out the window is a very uncreative answer to this perplexing problem.