The conformity of the geeky echo-chamber on the subject of copyright law worries me. The trouble with echo chambers is not just that extreme opinions (e.g. that

The conformity of the geeky echo-chamber on the subject of copyright law worries me. The trouble with echo chambers is not just that extreme opinions (e.g. that media piracy is okay and all intellectual property law should be abolished) start to seem mainstream to those inside them, but that the folks who want to have extreme opinions then have to adopt even more extreme opinions. Here, for instance, we have the opinion that not only is media piracy okay, but that any government attempt to stop it is not merely as bad as but worse than, say, the Chinese Government's ongoing attempts to censor anyone who dares to say "Hey, the Chinese Government kinda sucks". I don't think existing IP law is ideal, by any means, nor do I think that it's what I think it should be (and I'm not so arrogant to assume that what I think the law should be and what the law really should be are the same thing, since copyright law is intrinsically a compromise between different types of people, and there's certainly no reason why my personal preferences should take precedence over anyone else's). And I'm happy to engage and argue with people who have extreme opinions, but the correct way to express an extreme opinion starts off with an acknowledgement "OK, this might sound crazy but hear me out..." rather than a bald-faced assertion that "wah wah, enforcing copyright law is like shovelling babies into gas chambers" or whatever.