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Originally Posted by rlauzon
And what "property rights" are you talking about?
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Those protected in the UK, for example, by the 1988 "Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act", and by similar laws in all other civilized countries.
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Ideas cannot be owned. If they could, we would have no need for copyrights and patents. Property laws would be able to cover the situation.
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A book, piece of software, movie, MP3 files, etc, is not an "idea". Even a patent has to be more than an idea; it has to be a concrete application of an idea in the form of a practically-applicable process or product.
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The rhetoric of "copying is stealing" is just a smoke screen. Copying is not stealing. Name a single person who was charged with theft for copying something. You can't. Those people were charged with "copyright violation" not "theft".
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Where, in the post above, did I say that it was stealing? I said that these people were taking other peoples' intellectual property without paying for it. The law calls that "copyright infringement", not "theft". I personally regard that as merely a matter of semantics, but I'm not calling it "stealing".
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Also remember that copyright was created for the benefit of society not the author. Current copyright laws do not benefit society and are far out of touch with reality. So why are you surprised when people ignore them?
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Obeying the law is the moral basis of society. The law gives me rights as an author which I expect other people to respect, just as I respect the rights which the law gives them. If somebody violates my legal rights, I expect them to be punished according to the penalties specified by the law. Unless or until that law is changed, I am entitled to expect people to respect the rights that the law grants me.
If somebody feels that the law is outdated or unjust, they should take action, through the appropriate judicial processes, to have that law changed, not merely take it upon their own head to ignore that law. If they do ignore it, they have no cause for complaint if they are punished for doing so.
You claim that the law "does not benefit society", but I disagree. I can't make a living from writing a book or a computer program unless the law protects my rights as an author to receive income from doing so. If I don't get paid, I'm not going to create that product, and society loses out. That was the reason that copyright laws were introduced, and it's as valid today as it was in the 16th century. No protection for authors = no books.