[tptacek]

I think I'll take the many tens of thousands of dollars in premium that intellectual property law allows my work to command in preference to the warm fuzzies I might get at the prospect of Zac Efron's "We Are Your Friends" being free and immediately available on my Macbook, which also would not exist without intellectual property law.

[shkkmo]

You are also turning down the uncountable amount of economic growth that would be stimulated by the relaxation of copyright and especially patent laws in the software industry.

I'd take that regardless of whether it comes with free access to movies, music and TV shows.

edit: I think it's debatable how much impact it would have of software developer salaries. The only way I see it causing a drop in salaries is if it causes a reduced demand for developers by increasing software development efficiency.

[tptacek]

An "uncountable" amount of economic growth in free movies and music?

[gozo]

Now you are just trolling. There's countless of examples how lax copyright enforcment stimulate economic growth. From Hollywood to UK pirate radio station and YouTube to Chinese industry.

[tptacek]

Again: you're talking about media copyright?

[shkkmo]

No, take a moment to re-read what I wrote. I am talking specifically about:

"the relaxation of copyright and especially patent laws in the software industry"

[gozo]

"which also would not exist without intellectual property law"

What about all the things that still would exist? Would all those things be worse? What about if we had strong data protection laws? Maybe all those celebrities wouldn't have been violated. On the other hand maybe Google wouldn't have existed at all or maybe that is if copyright had actually been enforced. Hm.

The point being that the only thing we can be certain about is that things have changed and are going to change. When do we reach a point were copyright has to be reformed and at which point of that reform doesn't Zac Efon get to make his movie?

I'm personally not sure that the entitlement of Zac Efron is a huge factor in my views on copyright.