[olalonde]

You did not actually offer a counter argument. All you did was explain how "intellectual" property is not the same as "material" property. I think most of us will agree with you that the two are different and that the same rules don't apply. Now, we still need to figure out if intellectual property is a good thing for society.

IMO, copyright laws are a good thing as it leaves the choice to the content producers themselves whether or not they want to make their work freely available. However, as those laws are close to impossible to enforce effectively (on the Internet), there might be an argument for discarding them completely, stop fighting a lost battle and moving on.