[bvk]

The yard analogy doesn't work. You can't stand in a certain place in your yard when someone else is standing there. They are denying you the use of your property, however temporarily. The same goes for people standing in your house (which brings up privacy problems that are orthogonal to intellectual property). There are also maintenance costs - your yard might be ruined by hundreds of people walking over it, and you'd have to pay for its upkeep.

Those are both good reasons for protecting physical private property that don't apply to ideas.

[bmelton]

No, I didn't mean to make a big deal out of it. You're right that the yard analogy doesn't work -- but that's the problem, there's no analogy that does, not completely. I agree that it was poorly thought, but it was late, and as I hadn't heard the yard analogy before, my sleep-deprived brain thought it was somewhat novel. In retrospect, I agree that it wasn't.

I simply choose to respect the creator's wishes. If they hadn't created it, I wouldn't have been able to get enjoyment out of it, and to me, that's worth something. Yes, I appreciate that copying something isn't necessarily theft, but it does violate their wishes, and that seems a poor way to repay someone for creating something I like so much that I would consider taking it.