You basically just made the argument for a public domain.
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Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Uh, protection is provided via taxes.
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Yes, and who pay taxes? Not each and every individual. But each and every individual is entitled to the protections that those taxes pay for. Otherwise, a poor starving artist would be entitled to no copyright protection, since he pays no taxes. The amount of protection you get also is not contingent on how much you pay. It is the public that pays and provides the protection, because it derives some benefit for providing that protection. But that also means that the protection is a discretionary act of a public and that the public has no interest in paying for protection past the point of any benefit. Otherwise, you have a system of privatized profit and socialized cost. This basic fact was recognized by the Founding Fathers, which is why the copyright clause says
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Note that nothing in the constitution (or any constitution for that matter) is absolute. Even the Bill of Rights themselves can be amended. What that means is, as it pertains to government and laws, nothing is absolute. You can chant "property is property is property," but once you bring in government, laws, or a legal system, you are no longer in the realm of absolutes. Government, laws, and legal systems themselves are compromises and social institutions.
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Originally Posted by tubemonkey
If I'm expected to protect my own property, then I no longer have to pay taxes.
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Technically, government is not needed for the protection of property. It would be less efficient and less convenient for you to protect your own property, but you could certainly do it, at least with physical property. Physical property is scarce and rivalrous, so the only way for someone to get your property would be to physically take it from you, or to kick you off your land. In other words, for your property rights to be violated, others would have to act aggressively towards you, and thus protection is against said aggression. To protect your property, you could buy a gun, you could hire guards, you could get a guard dog, you could build a fence. But this is passive protection, i.e. self-defense; you are protecting your property from others potential aggression. To protect Intellectual "Property" on your own you would have to actively pursue people who copied your stuff, as well as intimidate people who could potentially copy your stuff. In other words, you would have to act aggressively towards others. Thus, while physical property entails passive protection, intellectual "property" entails oppression and repression.
To go back to the issue of taxation, let's really think this through, because I don't think the eternal copyrighters have cause they seem to live in a world of absolutes (when society itself is a structure of compromises). If putting any limits on the scope of copyright is a violation of inviolable property rights, then shouldn't the government taking money from people to protect copyright, regardless of whether they support that act or not, also be considered a violation of inviolable property rights? Suppose you believe that to be so. In that case, a just government would be one where people could chose whether or not to pay taxes. And considering that individuals almost invariably underestimate the costs they impose on society, that would mean that a government capable of protecting copyright would be impossible.
Suppose, however, you believe that government has a right to tax because property is an absolute right. What you are in fact doing then is creating a hierarchy of property rights; the money you make is not absolutely yours, because the government can take that to protect more important property. In that case, property is not property is not property.