[constantcrying]

I do not mind if these artists do not get paid. I absolutely realize that much of corporate art would not exist without IP laws and I accept that.

For books, most of the ones I read are passion projects and if I like them I buy them as thanks to the author/publisher.

I also have absolutely no problem with paying people for their work, I just do not believe they have any rights to their so called "IP".

[mitthrowaway2]

May I ask what you do for a living?

[constantcrying]

Research. Which really is an interesting case study. While patents exist, most research is distributed freely, except for a fee to an intermediary for doing absolutely nothing. My ideas are, after I published them, free to use and I have absolutely no right to tell orhers what to do or don't do with this.

Even corporate funded researchers, e.g. for AI, will publish and most of the published results are not protected by patents. Everyone is free to implement someone else's research paper and use it for their own commercial application. Science is also gravitating more to open access, e.g. with arxiv for mathematics and CS. Nobody owns "the right" to some mathematical proof or concept.

Citation is of course encouraged, but plagiarism is not a legal matter, much less a criminal matter.