I have yet to hear a "pirate" (in the political sense) argue creators should not get compensated. The argument is mostly, as I said above, that distribution is a commodity.

Note that a commodity still exists, but it would probably mean that the age of exclusive distribution deals would be over. It also implicates prices should go down, so more money should reach creators.

What do you think they mean when they say "Data should be free!"

Even a cursory look at their position that places like pirate bay should be allowed to be openly run would lead to creators not getting compensated.

Of course if pressed on it, they'll say, "oh, they can work on donations or whatever people feel like paying." But that's forcing content creators to act like street beggars. Like a movie theatre is going to put a hat in front of the Avengers 2 movie to raised 300 million of Avengers 3. It is ridiculous.

You keep putting up a silly proposition just to argue against it. I know it's easier for you, but it's also intellectually dishonest.

I've had a small bit of dealings with political "pirates", and I have yet to encounter the position you describe. "Information wants to be free" (which I guess you really mean) is really an old catch phrase more associated with the cyber liberty movement of the early 90s and the crypto wars, more than with modern political pirates.

Nobody has suggested movie theaters run on donations alone, but there has been suggestions that movie theaters should be free to license movies outside the distribution agreements. Again, the underlying idea is that distribution will become commodity. Argue against that instead and I will gladly explain the situation further.

The situation with sites like The Pirate Bay is not a matter of letting them operate or not, but a matter of where the common carrier status lies and where the legal responsibility falls (with the uploader, the downloader or the various infrastructure providers).

"movie theaters should be free to license movies outside the distribution agreements."

I'm not sure I understand what that means. Any deal they make to license the movie is a distribution agreement, by definition.

The deals underlying movie distributions are cut once or twice a year, mostly at trade conferences. It's not something the theaters are privy to. You are normally not allowed to license elsewhere unless you care to lose your distributor. It's something that plagues many independent theaters, at least in Europe.

It's all a bit of a power play over their heads and it's one of the reasons why you can't start an online streaming service in today's environment, which was one of the questions that was relevant to the political pirates last I've heard from them.

I don't know much more because I'm out of touch with the whole piratism thing, I just wanted to correct the "why u no pay" attitude earlier. It's a bit silly to think they could have reached parliamentary representation on that party line, and slightly condescending to everyone involved.