It's naive and inaccurate to view copyright (or, in fact, any form of intellectual property) as an absolute right. The state allows IP so that creators can be

It's naive and inaccurate to view copyright (or, in fact, any form of intellectual property) as an absolute right. The state allows IP so that creators can be rewarded for their efforts in the hopes that this will allow various industries to flourish. But such IP has limits. Patents can't be granted on certain things. For example, India does not allow patents on certain (all?) pharmaceuticals because it views low-cost health care for its citizens as being more in the national interest. The US does not allow the patenting of nuclear technology. Copyright has term limits, typically being X years after the death of the creator, although lobbying has steadily increased this limit (the so-called "Mickey Mouse" law). The idea is that at some point copyrighted works will pass into the public domain because that's in the public's interest without needlessly enriching countless descendants of the creators. Copyright has other limits: fair use, use by nonprofits, education use and so on. You may not even be aware that there is such a thing as compulsory licensing [1], which allows you to pay statutory royalties and use something without permission for certain enumerated purposes. Basically, copyright (or any IP for that matter) is not absolute. So we're simply haggling over what those limits are. As an aside, the content creators themselves, apart from a very few, don't derive significant economic benefit from their works (particularly in the music industry). What you're really doing is simply protecting the intermediaries (being the record companies). So arguing that they have the right is not only incorrect but it misses the point entirely: those rights exist by the grace of the state for the perceived (alleged?) national interest. "Stifling innovation" is not really something worth arguing about (in the sense of having a right to do so). Any protected industry fighting the tide still loses in the end. The genie never goes back in the bottle. Look at the millions spent on lobbying Congress to pass crazy laws, abuse of the judicial system for mass lawsuits, PR campaigns and so on. Have they stamped out piracy? No. Have they killed the idea of and the desire to download content over the Internet so we can all go back to buying CDs from the corner record store? Hardly. The writing is on the wall. So legislation is important too obviously but here it's only an issue because the various industries are so intransigent to the inevitability of change. [1]: http://copyright.gov/circs/circ73.pdf http://copyright.gov/circs/circ73.pdf