As a nerd, my argument isn't so much a "moral" one as a practical one. We have general purpose computers, so by definition anything that's pure data (such as mu

As a nerd, my argument isn't so much a "moral" one as a practical one. We have general purpose computers, so by definition anything that's pure data (such as music, videos, books, etc) is a commodity that's infinitely reproducible for virtually no cost (which is also incidentally why owning personal data should be considered a liability rather than an asset). Now, legally it's a lot more complicated than that. But those are all artificial complications that don't mesh with the reality of data on computers. And the law is going to continue to struggle to enforce previous-millenium models of commerce and will ultimately fail not because it's morally bad or anything, but simply because it doesn't fit the reality of computing. It seems to me that the "new" model of commerce will actually revert to patronage. Creators get paid up front to create something, after which they revoke control of it. This way they get their fair share without needing to struggle against the inevitable sharing of their content. Another way it could go is that all consumer devices are manufactured for specific applications rather than as general purpose computers. But I don't see that being realistic since the genie's already out of the bottle. People know how to build computers and there's no way to globally stop manufacturing of the components. Even only producing entertainment for specific hardware is unlikely to work, since if it works on one machine it can probably be translated to work on a computer as well.