[zanny]

Of course they don't want to buy, they recognize the cost of reproduction is zero. It is hard fact that once someone sets all the trillions of bits in a movie, game, operating system, or anything else we do, just ONCE, you can clone it for nothing as many times as you want.

Until we get off the distribution per unit model of retail we will have this war against consumers.

[J3L2404]

>they recognize the cost of reproduction is zero.

That is being very generous to the pimply-faced downloaders. I am quite sure the costs upfront or otherwise have no bearing.

[pfraze]

Pimples or no, anybody can recognize that ctrl-c, ctrl-v doesn't cost money.

[J3L2404]

Sorry to anyone offended by pimply, but this idea that anything copyable deserves no copyright is childish. Exceedingly so on a site about software.

[barrkel]

Copyright is a red herring. What we want is to encourage creation of valuable information products and services. Historically, copyright was one way of doing that, because copying information directly was difficult and required apparatus and physical tokens that could be policed relatively easily. When copying becomes as simple and trivial as breathing, policing the act of copying becomes intrusive and laborious.

So different mechanisms of encouraging content creation need to be found; the fight we should be fighting has little to do with preserving copyright in its historical form.

[J3L2404]

Whether you like or not copyright law still exists. It has been dismissed on message boards but has not been repealed.

When there is a viable mechanism of content creation it will gradually take over, just like every industry.

You can't tell people to give up their horse and buggy if the cars aren't ready yet.

[zanny]

All of the major historical changes of worth in terms of law and procedure all arose from doing things that were socially judged wrong but in hindsight we see they were right.

I feel copyright is one of those. I want to see the individuals that make the creative digital goods I consume well compensated and happy, because they make amazing things. But simultaneously, I realize my duplication of that good costs no one anything except potential lost sales and fractions of a cent of electricity.

[Androsynth]

Whether you like or not copyright law still exists

Because the govt is receiving boatloads of money from the entities that profit from copyright laws.