Actually you better realise something:
The reason why warez, p2p networks, torrents are so prosecuted....
....ISN'T PROTECTION OF THE AUTHORS AND ARTISTS....
...but the PROTECTION OF PROFIT.
Here's something written by Orson Scott Card on mp3 that can be applied to this situation as well:
Mp3's Are Not the Devil!
.....
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it. There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
.....
Since 1978, the law was changed so that copyright lasted until a certain number of years after the author's death. So not only did the author never outlive the copyright, but the author's dependents could continue to derive income from it for some time.
Also, copyright began, not when the work was listed with the Library of Congress, but rather from the moment of creation.
But there were loopholes. If you wrote something as an employee of a company that paid you a salary for creating it, then your writing was a "work made for hire" and the copyright belonged to the company. You had no rights.
Here's where the ugly stuff begins. A lot of publishers began routinely requiring writers to sign contracts that declared that what they wrote was a "work for hire," so that the authors wouldn't own any part of their own work. Of course the companies didn't actually hire the writers and give them benefits, like real employees. It was basically highway robbery -- the companies demanded that either the writers sign their names to a lie and give up all their rights, or the company wouldn't publish it.
Only a few of us were stubborn enough to refuse to sign work for hire contracts. It was an expensive moral quibble, but I have real objections to perjuring myself and pretending that I was hired by a company when in fact I never was. If I took all the risks and wrote something on spec, then the copyright should belong to me. I'd license them to do whatever was needed, but I wouldn't, in effect, declare them to be the author of my work.
......
Strip away all the pretension, and what you really have is this: Rapacious companies that have become bloated on windfall profits and ruthless exploitation of other people's talents are now terrified that the gravy train will go away.
Because in the brave new world of online distribution of cheap CDs, do you know who the only losers would be? Big-salary executives and owners of big record companies.
.......
He's clever fellow (darn clever and profoundly moral if you read some of his books) with an admirable set of standards and a backbone to stand up for them.
Even though he's not my cop of tea - since I'm a socialist (lefty) while he's a definite conservative, (the side that lefties usually bash for 'supporting' the opression of the masses and so on... yadda yadda liberal blind dogma, you know the rest....) - I can't help but nod in agreement with most of his ideas and remember that there's more to the Christian morality than the doublespeaking lies of the spoilt rich.
When a guy like him stands up for an issue, I can know for certain that it's not just my liberal/materialistic upbringing rising up against some seemingly outdated/pointless tradition but genuine rage against evil deeds of people who want to live off my blood and sweat without lifting a finger in their lifetime for the rest of us.
