[_delirium]

> One of the main arguments is that it's not stealing because revenue is not lost (like a physical item). My argument has always been that over time, the perceived value of the items would go down (because more and more people would expect to get it for free).

I can see that, but I suppose I see the first one as a natural sort of property right, and the second one not. The right not to have someone come into your house and physically remove things from it seems like something reasonable for the government to protect. But the right not to have those things lose value? If someone can make items in my home worthless without actually entering my home and taking them, e.g. by finding a way to make cheap copies of them easily, then I don't see that as a property-rights issue.

I do think encouraging innovation and creation is a worthwhile social goal, but it's different from the idea of protecting property imo. It might be done via quasi-property sorts of temporary monopolies (like patents and copyright), or through government subsidy of the arts and sciences, or both, but it's basically social engineering either way, and which mixture of approaches we take should be based on some analysis of what benefits we get out of each.