Having a copyright law that allows consumers to make copies but prohibits the sale of those copies doesn't seem very workable to me. You'd be saying that making

Having a copyright law that allows consumers to make copies but prohibits the sale of those copies doesn't seem very workable to me. You'd be saying that making money from other peoples work is wrong/illegal, but at the same time saving money by copying without permission is right/legal. In both cases one party is extracting value from the work of another, against their wishes. Seems that the copyright system we have now where the creator is the 'owner' of the intellectual property and sets the conditions for its disposal has a much stronger foundation. At any rate, surely you'd have to agree that if we changed copyright laws, it would only apply to work created from that point onwards. You couldn't reasonably shift the goalposts for works already published under the guarantee of copyright protection - that would be like raising income tax then applying it retrospectively. So what it seems to me is that people want to have their cake and eat it. They want free access to the works of a copyright funded/enabled culture, but they'd rather not be left with the lacklustre non-protected output. At any rate, let me rephrase my question. Would taking a picture of the print an artist was trying to sell you and then making a copy strike you as a decent thing to do? Would you happily say to their face, 'I'm not going to buy your print, but I'm going to take a photo of it so I can make my own copy?' (we could go a bit further and mention distributing other copies to all your friends so none of them will buy it either, but I don't think that's even necessary)