There's nothing inherent in nature that gives a creator any control whatsoever over others' use of their ideas. In the absence of a system of copyright, every audience member at a concert would be free to hold their own concert the next day, singing their remembered versions of the same songs. This is how culture actually worked for ages.

Copyright is a legal fiction, created by governments and enforced by the threat of violence. It is often a useful legal fiction, but absolutely none of it justifies the selfish and self-righteous "MINE!" attitude you seem to espouse in your confusion of physical theft with duplication of ideas.

> This is how culture actually worked for ages.

That's an interesting perspective that we've lost through time as a result of our laws.

This is why DRM scares me so much. What will our society be like when culture says that it's ok that we don't get to tinker, that we don't actually own anything, etc.

All laws are fiction by your account. Why is violence illegal? Why can't bigger/more skilled people just beat up the weak and take their stuff? That's how things were for tens of thousands of years. Prohibiting that is a legal fiction.

Torrenting a movie does not fall into the category of "theft of ideas." It is falls into the category of stealing a work.

As for the argument that things would be made/written etc. anyway, you can still find that. It's out there. If it was better, you would be hearing the music all over the radio. You would be seeing the productions all over TV (because there's no royalty to pay, right?). You do hear and see some, but it's no way for a lot of to make a living. It's not enough. There's no way to take a year off and write that novel that you aren't going to get paid for. So you write a blog instead.

No, some way to protect the work of the people who do it is needed. I appreciate your opinion, but I don't think it's the right answer here.

Yeah, all laws are inventions of people intended to express shared morals in a way that prevents vigilantism. I did say copyright is often a useful fiction. But it goes way too far in its present form of 120 year terms and conflation with physical property. As just one hypothetical, we could easily have a system of patronage with a pseudomarket that determines where the patronage is applied, and creators would still get paid, without having to sue single moms and college students.

You're still using words like "theft" and "stealing". Those terms confuse duplication with deprivation. If we had a magic ray gun that could make a copy of any car on the street for basically zero cost, without affecting the original owner of the car, you'd better believe people would use that, and they definitely wouldn't call it stealing.

So when discussing how to reward creators of intangible products for their work (but only if it's actually good -- nobody "deserves" extra money just because they want it), talking about "theft" and "property" is not helping.

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Added in edit:

> You would be seeing the productions all over TV (because there's no royalty to pay, right?).

I don't think we can reasonably use our current reality as proof that it's the only possible reality. We see talented people gravitate toward the available market for their talents, yes, but in the absence of that market I don't see how their talents would just evaporate.

Besides, most of us who oppose current copyright aren't talking about total abolition (at least not until society is completely post-scarcity). We want an acknowledgement that current works stand on the shoulders of past works, and that future works should be allowed and encouraged to do the same, as well as an acknowledgement that technology is changing and the conveniences of that technology should be embraced, not hindered with crap like DRM and oppressive lawsuits.

Then maybe we're not that far apart. I believe that the term is too extendable-it should be shorter (maybe even non-renewable). But I'm standing on "stealing." Once everybody duplicated that first car, who builds the one that makes it better? She's only going to sell one. So, yeah- torrenting hurts.

Wow we were literally on the same wavelength there :)

Well, this is true in Capitalism as we know it. But, truthfully there is a deeper relationship to the things we create and the people we share them with. What is the end goal of creating art or new scientific discoveries? If it's money alone, well, that's a problem. Ideas need to be shared whether art or science. Just think how we use Arabic numerals.. Every day. Should we be paying someone for that privilege?

What if there were no copyrights. Would people still create things? Damn right they will. At least the skilled and the curious people will.