[gozo]

"Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor."

No it's not. If anything, that is a ridiculous opinion. It has no basis is society, law or discourse. There's little relation between labor and copyright. A more apt analogy is something like land rights. But that is still not talking about the real issue. Chefs puts significant amount of labor into their creations, they are not covered by copyright.

[TimJYoung]

Yes, and chefs are compensated for their time/labor. You can't just walk into a restaurant, eat a meal, and take off without paying what the owner of the restaurant has determined is the price of the food you just consumed. How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale ? There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work.

[gozo]

Chefs are compensated for their time (unless maybe you're the head chef), but they are also not compensated for their intellectual property, which is the point. Maybe a better example is copying a dress (if you imagine outsourced manufacturing).

"How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale?"

There are plenty of creative people who sell their time, just like chefs. Of course plenty of companies today don't even sell software, but essentially services.

"There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work"

Yes, but this is to some extent a different issue than copyright itself. I'm not even arguing for the removal of copyright (I'm personally for stronger authors rights with drastic reduction in terms), just that copyright is mainly rights to artistic, rather than utilitarian or scientific, things i.e. doesn't have a whole lot to do with labor.

This should be even more apparent today with cloud distribution, where software can't be resold.

[TimJYoung]

Yes, but chefs have absolute control over the ingredients in any "special recipes" and can restrict access in ways that those that produce works like literature and software cannot. Unlike digital goods, the resultant dishes cannot be copied indefinitely at zero cost.

I also do not really care for the super-long copyright terms, and my posts here should not be confused as a defense of the likes of Disney, etc. Most software is obsolete within a year. The unauthorized copying of newly-released software is my primary issue, having been directly affected by it for so long.