[nocipher]

People usually try to skirt this issue. The proponents of copyright laws stubbornly call anyone who would infringe a thief while those on the other side of the argument aptly point out the fallacy of such analogies.

The truth of the matter is that copyright law assumed a certain level of difficulty involved in the act of copying another work. To copy a book requires either theft from a publisher or pouring through it, page by page, and manually recreating it. The same is true of old VHS tapes. Some apparatus, not widely available, was required to make copies that could be redistributed. Since real effort was required to produce copies, copyright law could rightfully condemn those who would make copies.

The ubiquity of digital technology has fundamentally changed this. Copying anything is trivial yet copyright law has been left unchanged. These laws are simply inadequate for our modern reality.

An overhaul of the whole system by some smart, competent, and knowledgeable people is necessary. Unfortunately, big media has such stake in the antiquated laws, and such influence in the legislature (in the US, but very likely abroad as well), that such a change probably won't happen for a number of years. So, until then, we are stuck in this lawless landscape where everyone on every side of the argument is wrong.

[ced]

The truth of the matter is that copyright law assumed a certain level of difficulty involved in the act of copying another work.

I think you have it upside-down. Before the printing press, there were no copyrights. It was an honor for the author if someone took the time to copy his book.

Nowadays, when you buy a book or a CD, you're paying for content, not for the medium. In that context, maybe "stealing" is not an appropriate word, but "free-loading" definitely is.

[nocipher]

I never thought of it like that. Maybe technology does necessitate rights management.

Even so, copying is trivial and available to everyone. It is not feasible to have the granular control necessary to prevent widespread copying and this is exactly the situation with which we are faced. I argue that the current laws are inadequate for dealing with the situation and, in fact, I think this is self-apparent.

Your argument seems to be that what we are buying is somehow different from what we used to buy. You also seem to have downgraded the act of copying from theft to some lesser repugnant act. Both of these would suggest that we need something different from the current copyright system.

You can disagree with my initial synopsis of copyright laws, and your point of contention there is likely valid, but my message wasn't that copyright laws were only useful when it was difficult to copy works, but that the laws, as they exist now, do not fit in a world where content is so liquid and decentralized.

By no means am I arguing that, because of this, creators should not have their works protected, but rather that a paradigm shift is necessary to actually reach that end.