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A few points I'd like to make after reading of this thread.
1. It's n-th incarnation of the same old thread about piracy that's been around here since long before I joined. But every time it's a bit different, and I like reading them like I like boxing matches on TV.
2. I don't see any connection between law of the community I happened to be born in to morality. I didn't have part in putting those laws into existence, I don't have part in fixing them (the thing about voting for the right people is really a cover, and never in my life a person I voted for won the election), I don't agree with most of them, and so I don't internalize them (if I even could, laws of EU count tens of thousands of tomes). I consider them in my actions, even though breaking them and penalties for it are defined more and more vaguely each year, and it's often impossible to find what the law has to say on some matter. So saying that what's illegal is wrong makes no sense to me.
3. Unauthorized copying isn't theft. Copyright violation isn't theft either.
4. One can't be an owner of a piece of information. An idea, a book, or any other piece of information having an owner is nonsense. One can be a creator, or discoverer of it, but everyone reached by this piece of information becomes a discoverer as well.
5. The copyright law is an utilitarian strategy aimed at making writing books profitable. It's long outdated, it's been bloated out of proportion by companies protecting their economic interests, and it does more damage than profit to the public now.
6. There exists a term "intellectual property", IP for short, which incorrectly implies that idea has an owner, and thus does much harm to public opinion on the matter of copyright. Not everyone has inclination to get to the source documents and find out what copyright really is, and naming it "property" makes people treat copyright as law protecting a property, and not just granting a monopoly to that which isn't really anyone's property.
7. I hope the idea of "intellectual property" and copyright will die out in time, and I see indications it will happen. Unfortunately, as the holders of those ideas rarely seem to change their minds, it'll have to be progress by funerals, and might take decades. Alternatively, if big companies make their moves right, it might become a fig leaf for corporate dictatorship across the world. Time will tell.
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