I don't expect to convert anyone here, but I will correct your facts:
There are excellent reasons why intellectual property
rights
exist and have existed in one form or another in so many places
and for so long;
The very first thing that resembled a copyright was the Statute of
Anne in 1710. Many countries today still have none. "Excellent
reasons" is of course just an unsupported value judgment.
probably the most important is that, without them,
artists
and inventors lose an extremely important incentive to carry
on their work.
This is indeed the common justification for them. But clearly the
entire Renaisance is a counterexample: art, invention, culture, and
creativity flourished as never before in human history--witout
benefit of copyrights or patents.
Of course, if one were a luddite, for example, one
might want to
oppose intellectual property protections, because getting rid of
them would almost certainly have a very chilling effect on the
development of technology.
I personally am an Extropian, which is roughly the exact opposite of
a Luddite (I should point out that the majority of Extropians still
support your view of things--though I'm working on that:). I want
technology and creativity to grow and flourish--and profit--and I
sincerely believe that copyrights and patents get in the way of that
goal. I have not been brainwashed by a culture shaped by intrenched
status-quo interests who use these scare stories to justify present
law; I have examined the history and the facts for myself, and drawn
my own conclusions.
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