Quote:Why precisely would the "rights" other people supposedly have supersede the rights of artists (or, for that matter, inventors) to profit from their own work? Why precisely do you deserve to get someone's music for free? They did something. You didn't. Seems to me their rights in the matter ought to trump yours.
Quote:1) Irrelevent. You could use the same argument to say doctors ought to earn the same as Walmart cashiers, but we very quickly would not have many doctors left.
Clearly you don't understand the point I am making about economics. supply and demand applies to the labor market as well, and doctors require expensive and long training, therefore are limited in supply hence expensive. if artits are not getting much money it's due to there being an oversupply of them.
Quote:2) That is due to how the industry is currently set up, and any and all problems with that are an entirely separate issue.
No it is directly related, copyright was made primarily for distributors, and many of the problems exists because of the way the system is set up. If you agree there is a problem then you must agree that there needs to be some reform.
Quote:3) Fanfiction exists in a legal grey area under current copyright law
That depends entirely on where you live, and even in the US (the laegal system you seem to be assuming) you could make the argument that it is illegal unless it's a parody. in addition i don't see any fanfiction author not honoring a takedown request. In addition that is just an example, remixing music routinly get takedown requests, when they are practically the same thing under copyright law.
Quote:in addition, already possible for fanfiction and other derivative works to make money via obtaining legal permission to do so.
True but you seem to be saying that the rights of artist are different depending on how much their work is influenced by others. tolkien gave us most of the standard modern format for a fantasy world, so in essence pretty much all sword and sorcery fantasy could be considered fanfiction of tolkien. Culture builds on itself, it is forinstance impossible to use many fairy tales, you know those stories made hundereds of years ago, because disney made a version of them and they will sue. In fact they have to sue or lose their copyright.
Quote:5) Go try and sell some software in Taiwan and tell me again how file-sharing increases legitimate sales. The real world performance of every single industry affected by file-sharing is uniformly negative, everywhere in the world.
Bulshit. link to studies on filesharing. Most of these conclude otherwise. So you have research to back up your assertion?
Quote:The concept of "benefit to society" is completely nebulous and meaningless. I am concerned with people being rewarded for their work, a far more concrete and measurable concept.
economist routinly messure the benefit to the commons, it is quite messurable. What is the problem you have with basic economics anyway. Under that kind of reasoning we wouldn't have roads because it's a nebulous benefit for the common good.
Quote:Prohibition would be invalidated by that, as well as the many other differences
Yes, a lot of differences, but some studies estimate that 87% of people do P2P filesharing, and 150'000$ fines per infringement is normal. In a democracy that means something is very wrong, compare it with the fine for speeding, and speeding theoretically threatens other peoples lives and property and yet is is only a few hundered dollars at most. Yet going by the fines file sharing is much much worse. these fines are comparable to the fines for manslaughter or something similar. It's a symptom of trying to get a failing system to work.
7) and your point is?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."