Uh, that was a rhetorical question. Intelligent readers can see that he's saying copyright, as a social institution, isn't actually the travesty some make it ou

Uh, that was a rhetorical question. Intelligent readers can see that he's saying copyright, as a social institution, isn't actually the travesty some make it out to be. Intelligent people also recognize that "detrimental" is a pretty broad category, and that you can't necessarily make an apples to apples comparison between two things simply because they're both detrimental. Copyright is a legal and social institution. Wars, murder, and disease are not. Neither are earthquakes for that matter, or volcano eruptions. Detrimental as they may be, they're hardly things we can simply legislate out of existence (even I that's exactly what one of the Carolinas is trying to do in response to rising sea levels). If you want to make a proper apple to apples comparison, pick something that is, at least, remotely analogous. Slavery, for instance, or the poll tax. Just make sure it's something people can actually legislate one way or the other, and not something that is obviously beyond the reach of the law.