Thomas Babington Macaulay gave some brilliant speeches on this, back in the first half of the 19th century: http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyr

Thomas Babington Macaulay gave some brilliant speeches on this, back in the first half of the 19th century: http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/commentary/MacaulaySpeeches.html http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExte... One takeaway from his words is brutally practical: if access to information (including entertainment) is not cheap and plentiful, people will pirate. All that attempts to prevent piracy (i.e. enforce rent-extracting monopolies)accomplish is encourage it, and create not just sympathy, but public acceptance and encouragement of it.