[ajross]

To be fair, it's not "all" in the sense of "all of us".

Many (frankly most) programmers are employed in positions where the revenue supporting their salary is not the sales of licenses to potentially copyable IP. I work for a hardware vendor. Web developers sell services and data access, etc...

I don't necessarily agree with the grandparent's position on copyright, but the content utopia those folks envision isn't actually implausible.

[tptacek]

They work in a market alongside people whose compensation is entirely derived from intellectual property law. Their wages are driven up by compensation from those firms.

[ajross]

Which is true, though that gets to your use of "a lot" in the original.

To claim that content IP licensing pays for some programmers salaries is straightforward. To extend that to argue that salaries of all programmers are significantly higher needs numbers; it's not at all an obvious corrollary.

[tptacek]

I don't directly profit from software IPR (I don't sell shrink-wrap). If software IP was indefensible, I think I'd lose more than 40% of my market value.