Gee, if copyright has nothing to do with the creation of those works, then why do they use copyright as their business model? If an artist or author wants to create a work and not use copyright, they can. And you can give your business to those artists. But if artists want the right to exclude and use it to market their works, then it’s sad that you don’t respect that and you think it’s OK to violate their rights.

OK, you think patent law should change. Good for you. You can work to make that change happen, just like anyone else. But what you shouldn’t do–and what is wrong and immoral to do–is to just say, “Fuck them! I’m going to do what I want, even if it means violating their rights.” That attitude, which is clearly the norm on Techdirt (And what glorious pirate leader has made this place so inviting to pirates? Hmmm…), is just selfish and childish.

“Creative content was made before copyright ever entered the picture. Ever heard of Shakespeare? Homer? Leonardo da Vinci? Michelangelo? Bach? They didn’t need copyright to create works of art and literature and music that we still enjoy today.”

This is a typical highlight reel from those who try to justify ripping the current situation apart, without first understanding the reality of the situation.

In the days of Sharespeare, what percentage of the population do you think had access to his works? Not today, but back in the day? The answer would often be very small, because of the limited space, the limited number of performances, and yes, that often his work was done for various patrons or financiers.

Many of the great works of art were created under the system of patrons or “the king is paying”, but also lead to those works not being available during the artist’s lifetime in any meaningful way. A painting may have been made, hung only in a private room inside the kings residence, and not seen until the next generation.

“The most innovative people and companies today are showing us they don’t want or need patents and they are being attacked by those who have them on the stupidest and vaguest ideas.”

This is actually a pretty twisted perception of the situation, because they are forgetting what they are building their fortunes on. Most of the content out there right now is copyright, and is used as the grist in the mill as it were for these sites to operate. A Youtube or a Reddit would almost certainly not be functional without the copyright material being part of the deal.

You almost never can find a system that isn’t working with copyright material to make itself go. Even Twitter in the end is a product of copyright, with many discussions being about music, tv, movies, and celebrities. If you took away those topics of discussion and only allowed the discussion to be about non-copyright items, it would get dull pretty fast.

This also goes a long way to explain why copyright doesn’t lock up culture,as is often the claim on Techdirt and similar sites. You can see how these copyright works are a significant part of the discussion, with no piracy or “sharing” required for them to be part of culture.

“You want to meet somewhere in the middle? Ok, let’s roll back every bit of copyright law that came about after 1975. Let’s stop granting vague patents, and void out all software and business model patents currently on the books. That’s a start.”

You can roll back the copyright law to 1975 when you roll back tax law to the point before the IRS was created, and so on. It’s not going to happen, not any time soon. You can perhaps do so at a point that you can point to a truly better system that works for everyone – not just for you personally.

“They’re good for shady middlemen and unethical accountants taking nearly every bit of profit from artists who are trying to creative beautiful new works.”

It’s really just not true. The artists make the choice to sell their rights for a given amount. If the work happens to be popular, others may make more money from it. However, as it the Techdirt creed, that artist (especially in music) can always go out and perform it live to make money. If the creed is that musicians shouldn’t make money selling copies, but should make it performing, why does it matter how much a (dreaded) middleman makes? For that matter, do you even consider the influence of the middle man on the artist having the time and the means by which to create that work? Or are you once again just spewing up the typical Techdirt drekk stuff about all middlemen being bad?

In mentioning patents, you sort of reveal yourself. You have mixed it all up in your head, missing the significant differences in copyright and patent. Mixing them is like adding salt to your coffee and complaining it’s not sweet enough. You missed the point entirely.