[pantaril]

Exactly. When i hear a discussion in public, i won't ask for permission if i want to use or reproduce part of it elsewhere. I would give them attribution (i don't like to pretend that i came up with some idea when it isn't true) but that's all.

The attitude of content creators is quite schizophrenic. On one hand, they want to spread their work as far as possible, on the other hand, they want to limit access to it. The source of this stance is of course their business model often based on copyright law which links the financial reward of the author with the artificialy created copying limitations. Replace this with some other model where content creators reward is not depended on the number of copies sold or on number of page hits, but rather on some more rational measure like the amount of time and effort put into the creation itself, on the popularity/reputation of the creator and quality of his previous works. Then, this 'copying is stealing and stealing is bad' attitude disappears because i believe that no sane author would realy object against spreading of his works.

[chilldream]

Your argument loses a lot of weight when you consider that since we're talking about stuff on the Internet, most of the examples in OP could just, y'know, link to it. But that wouldn't let them get ad revenue for someone else's work.