Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
Forget the copyright then. Call it theft if someone takes what you've written and profits from your work — if that makes it easier. Why should something someone writes be less protected than something someone paints (for example)? Both are valuable because of the artistic merit involved. It's not like a writer is copyrighting random words.
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Should I be paid forever for programs that I write? Should a carpenter be paid every time someone sits in a chair he made? How about jokes, shouldn't the comedian who first told a joke be paid every time anyone tells that joke? Why should only a small subset of creators be protected? That's the flaw in assuming that copyright is some sort of natural right. The vast majority of creative work is not protected.
Copyright is purely an artificial mechanism for encouraging a subset of artists. It's a bargain between the state and the artist basically saying for a limited time, the state will keep people from copying a work without the artist permission. There is no natural right involved. For most of recorded history, copyright did not exist and the idea that an artist should be able to control who made copies of his work was not even considered.
Copyright violation is not thief, no matter how you may feel about it. It's a civil, not criminal.