"Now about your last statement: you and every other person would try to poach the leaders. Here is the fundamental flaw with that business model: should someone

"Now about your last statement: you and every other person would try to poach the leaders. Here is the fundamental flaw with that business model: should someone be actually innovative, you could never catch them. You would constantly be losing to them because by the time you get the copy working, they have moved on to the next step of progress leaving you and your competitors to fight over the scraps." There are plenty of small companies that are struggling to get profitable. If I had a company with more manpower and money, it wouldn't take much to profit from a good idea. Especially if there was no law in place to protect the other company. This happens all the time right now, even with these laws in place. "Identity theft is a real theft. When I copy a song, or a bit of data or whatnot, and then use it, the only consequence to the copyright holder is potential loss of a sale. " Like I said in my previous post. It's not just a potential loss of a sale. When something is pirated enough, the perceived value approaches $0. "Identity theft on the other hand does real damage to people. A stolen identity has components of "potential damage", this is true. It also doesn't change the fact that damage is realized -- changes to credit situations cause real life fees and interest rate changes. Withdrawals from bank accounts are real, not hypothetical losses to the original person" Pirating software causes real world damage to the original content creator. If they paid thounsands (or millions) of dollars in development and marketing costs, there won't be much chance to make those costs up. You based your entire point on the fact that theft has to actually take something away from someone. When you "steal" an identity, nothing is really taken. Information is copied and used, but it's still there. "The welfare thing: copyright is assistance handed out by the government, in the form of "if you are stupid enough to base your earnings on something easily copyable, we'll force people to pay you anyway." It's funny how you are arguing for the right to take someone else's hard-earned work and dilute it to the point where they may not be able to make a living. It's an amazingly selfish and entitled attitude.