[gorkonsine]

>I understand piracy more when it's literally impossible to make a legal purchase of something; I get it. When it's merely a matter of spending less money, I have a lot less sympathy for the copyright infringers.

What if the work is old? Do you think it's wrong to make an unauthorized copy of Shakespeare's works, or Beowulf? So why should I have to pay someone for a copy of, say, a Hitchcock movie like "The Birds"? That movie is over a half-century old now, and if the copyright laws hadn't been changed, it'd have been in the public domain for the last 30 years. So why should I feel guilty if I download a copy of it? Why should I be obligated to spend money to some rights-holder who bought out the rights to a work where everyone involved in its production is now dead?

[sokoloff]

I view copyright as a means to permit society to have more creative works produced. Would Hollywood make a $100MM movie if they couldn't charge for it or could only charge the first person for it? Would drug companies invest billions in research to create effective new drugs for society if they knew they couldn't reap any financial reward for success?

I don't love all the corner cases that result from IP law and in particular hate software patents, but I also think that society and individuals therein benefit from there being a commercial payoff for investing in making creative works. I'm periodically surprised at how little value is placed on that by a some software engineers, given that most of what we create is more valuable (or made commercially possible) by virtue of copyright protections.

I understand that other people may feel differently.

[gorkonsine]

You're not answering the question. How does it benefit society for the works of Shakespeare to be protected by copyright now, after hundreds of years?

[sokoloff]

The reason you think I'm not answering the question is that I believe you have a faulty premise (that the works of Shakespeare are under copyright protection today).

I believe they are not.

[gorkonsine]

Now you're either missing the point, or being intentionally obtuse.

No, the works of Shakespeare are not, but works that are 50 or 75 years old still are, even though everyone who wrote or created them are now dead. How is this useful to society? It's no different than if Shakespeare's works were still protected by copyright. And since we have now enacted perpetual copyright, nothing new will ever fall into the public domain from this point forward.

[chrismcb]

Because you are a law avoiding citizen... I think that copyrights are to long, something on the order of 25 years is closer to what they should be. I feel like the current lengths are infinite as far as a living human is concerned and thus unconstitutional. But unless I want to practice civil disobedience, I should still be a civil person and follow the law. Copying something such that no one knows I did it isn't civil disobedience