Its about freedom of information. The internet makes that possible. Information should be accessible to anyone, for free.
Copyright breaks that. It breaks the internet, and it causes a lot more problems than the one that was meant to fix.
With respect to copyright holders, if you dont want your work shared, internet is not a full proof solution, and (hopefully) will never be. It was designed for sharing.
How dare we! It's not like we have living expenses or aspire to any sort of financial stability.
Information should be accessible to anyone, for free.
I love how you assert that without any supporting arguments. Please send me the information on how to help myself to a portion of whatever is in your bank account. I know that anything you have accumulated there is the result of your skill and labor, but I appreciate your generosity and determination to make this accessible to me and will limit my consumption of your bank balance to an amount I consider reasonable.
The threat we're currently facing from associations like MPAA is a lot bigger than any of us. Today we talk about artistic content, tomorrow it's science and cure for cancer (and that might be already happening - recently a doctor told me how he was trying to re-gain access to the university's private for students only library). That's the kind of information I was talking about, obviously not personal ones. That's what the internet made a reality and copyright breaks it.
You argue that your work has value and really, I agree with you. But we're using the world's first medium to gain popularity or whatever, and IMO we just have to accept its drawbacks, that our work (if it's good) will be shared. Many programmers for instance, they publish for free, and some may accept donations (others live by them).
I'm not saying that you should publish for free, but many individuals make this choice daily for their own reasons. I'm only hoping that as internet mentality matures, better and fairer means to compensate for intellectual work will be invented, but for now the way you're advocating copyright you're only helping the ones that already made millions off of it. If it wasn't for them, your work would probably be a lot more valuable and we would be enjoying better, genuine content.
Just not your information, of course.
content creator slightly worse off
How did you decide this?
Just about all of us can easily get what's primarily being distributed on sites like Pirate Bay. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Cable Company X On-Demand streams, HBO Go, Spotify, etc. it's all out there and far easier to access than hopefully getting a high quality rip off a torrent site. Okay, maybe some things aren't available in all countries and maybe the business model makes it next to impossible to buy a copy of a movie or song once and have it on all your devices in some cases. But really, is that really the primary use case for the Pirate Bay? Someone is going to say it is for them but if you believe that that's the primary use case across the board then you've got to be an apologist or just lying to yourself. Have I pirated movies, music, and software? Absolutely. Because I couldn't afford or just didn't want to pay for it. But I sure as hell am not telling myself that it was okay because copyright is evil and because "business models" and people who pirate wouldn't pay anyway so no one loses money. I live in the real world, not the ideal world.