So let me redeem him, at least in part. It’s the current distribution channels that he’s objecting to and the monopoly rents charged there for that. As noted elsewhere, the creator rarely profits from this arrangement as the MO of “publishers” (physical books, movies, recordings through their cozy arrangements with music publishers) insist the creator sign their copyright over to them. So your oft repeated and incorrect notion that creators benefit directly (or often indirectly) from the copyright regime is false.

As is this” “as it’s based on the simple moral principle that WHO created it should have control over it.” There is nothing in the statue of Anne, the original US copyright laws derived from it or anything that has followed in the English speaking world that speaks of “moral rights” indirectly or directly. Once again….copyright came about largely to protect English publishers from bankrupting themselves by issuing multiple editions of a title by an author all at the same time. One or more of whom might, just might, have tossed the author a coin or three. It’s secondary intent was the promotion of education from which it’s possible to derive that walled gardens of copyright were NOT intended, though in many ways that’s what we have and THEN to provide the author with the possibility of earning a few coins. There is no guarantee of that, practical or otherwise, as the book may not sell diddly squat in which case the author is on the hook for any advances and other investments the publisher may have made in them.

(The same risk applies to the granting of a patent. Just because you have a patent doesn’t guarantee that anyone is the slightest bit interested. There are thousands of them collecting dust that no one, other than the inventor perhaps, has ever turned into a product.)

So it’s clear, even to a moron in a hurry, that copyright and/or patent law was never intended as a welfare scheme for authors/creators or those they signed the rights over to as you seem to think. Along with entities such as the RIAA and MPAA and others.

You also persist in the fiction that signing these rights over to a publisher is an agreement freely entered into by two equal and willing parties. The reality is that is you want your book published (or a fictional movie distributed) you must sign your rights over to the publisher or it’s not going to get printed/distributed. In strictly legal terms this is called signing a contract under duress. AFAIK it’s never been found that way in court because the applicable copyright laws and regulations allow for this. That doesn’t change the fact that the parties are equal or that both parties are willing as one is essentially forced into the arrangement.

Unless, you self publish/distribute. The latter as Mike has repeatedly pointed out has been made so much easier with the advent of the Internet, things like file lockers, the evil and wicked bittorrent and a host of other technologies. None of which insist on signing your copyright over. None of which negates or diminishes copyright despite what you seem to think.

They might, however involve a bit more work. As a publisher will demand that work anyway you may as well just do it yourself. (In the form of book tours, band tours, subjecting yourself to endless interviews with bored and totally disinterested reporters, signing books and stuff till your arm is ready to fall off and so on.)

As a total and complete aside, though you brought it up, bands such as U2 got their starts in a garage not a stadium. It then follows logically and realistically that garage bands do, in fact, count.

What Richard is saying, in reality, is that if the citizenry has removed its support for, and by extension, support of copyright then it IS time to goes. Not that I want to see that outcome but that WILL be the case if maximalists like you don’t compromise.