This is one of the few really reasonable comments I've seen about this issue. Most people are taking very extreme positions on this. It makes sense that they ta

This is one of the few really reasonable comments I've seen about this issue. Most people are taking very extreme positions on this. It makes sense that they take such positions to be heard in the face of such radical opposition but here, amongst ourselves, why can't we just say that copyright has some merits to it. It isn't perfect but no copyright at all wouldn't be good. We can't be going around deciding that people in certain professions (musicians, visual artists, programmers) should no longer have any rights to their work and need to find another way to make money. People will stop sharing their creations. I give away some open source stuff but I'd like to reserve the rights to some of my work for at least some reasonable period of time. People will always release great things for free but some people will either stop releasing or have less time or motivation to create these great things if copyright went away. This shouldn't be a choice between one or the other. Both choices put more people at a disadvantage than simply scaling back copyright would. How about this, we all know government is broken. So do we get rid of it and become anarchists? Anarchists would say yes but the rest of us wouldn't. A better solution would be to address the issues causing the problem rather than simply getting rid of the thing that has a problem. You don't kill yourself to get over the flu. You don't stop eating completely because your fat. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let's keep copyright but modify it to benefit the most people. Anti-copyright proponents would like us to think they are doing things "for the people". I say they're doing it for themselves. When you and all your friends think a certain way it's easy to think everyone else feels the same. Let's remember that "the people" are more than just consumers and ant-copyright-friendly creators. They're indie developers making awesome stuff we love, they're working at startups we drool over, and yeah, they work for the evil corporation too but are we really going to deny them everything they ask for out of spite? A good solution would work for most of the people most of the time (even the people trying to screw us but oh well). It isn't extreme or black and white and it takes into account that a creator's rights aren't any less important than a consumer's.