Actually, that, if true (which it isn’t – slavery is illegal in every country in the world, if nothing else, by Article 4 of the UDHR) would support my argument.

So, first we have your starting post, which you end by stating:

Fact is, copyright is the law. Deal with it.

I may be misinterpreting you, but you seem to be suggesting that opposing, criticising or calling for the reform of copyright and copyright enforcement is bad because it “is the law”.

Then we have the response:

Fact is, [segregation] is the law. Deal with it.

This point here being that just because something is in the law, doesn’t mean it is right. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, segregation is a fairly bad example – not least because there are various different types, and in some places it was never legal (apparently, in the UK, the last segregation that was legal was segregating English and Irish people in the 14th century).

So, you pointed out some of the reasons why this was a bad example here:

Yeah, ’cause recognizing someone’s property right in a work that costs time and money to create is the same thing as segregation. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but pretty much every nation on earth has copyright laws.

There seem to be two points here; one that copyright is better than segregation because it involves giving people a property right, which is needed due to the time and money invested (which isn’t quite true for copyright in many places, as it covers everything from major feature films to doodles). The second being that every nation on earth has copyright laws (which is mostly true, thanks to WIPO and the UN forcing the Berne Convention on everyone).

So, my response was to point out a better analogy: Slavery. Slavery involves giving people a property right (over their slaves), and recognises the time and money that goes into capturing and training a slave. Similarly, at some point or another, seems to have been legal in most countries (although there’s some debate as to whether or not it was ever technically legal in the UK).

Thus, your arguments supporting the current copyright regime (and opposing criticism etc. of it) are arguably flawed as precisely the same arguments could have been used to oppose the abolition of slavery.

That said, slavery, while illegal everywhere in the world, is rampant, with more people being held in slavery than ever before. Perhaps we should legalise it again – creating a new property right, to reward slavers for their hard work? I imagine you could find a BASCAP-style study to say that it will generate $bns in new revenue, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and save us from recession.

[Ah, nothing like troll-feeding to start the day…]