Re: Perforce, old assumptions must be discarded
"Each instance [of a physical medium] exists uniquely in time and place. The number of instances created is finite (e.g. printed copies of a book). These substrates can be construed as property"
Except, of course, the the number of instances isn't finite because anyone can make a copy of a book. Even three centuries ago, if I owned printing equipment, I could get someone else's book and churn out more copies. The laws weren't applied because I couldn't make another copy, but because it wasn't good for me to be able to make copies of someone else's work without allowing the person who created the work to profit from their work. Copyright exists to protect the creative person's effort from someone who can just copy.
"There is but one valid economic model encompassing monetisation of idea creation. That consists of a market made up from creative individuals and groups (plus requisite skills) competing for attention from prospective sources of funding for their next project. The underlying source of funding is voluntary patronage."
Yes, that's always nice, but it won't go very far when the only way to do anything expensive is to find people who give out donations. I have a project I want to build because it's useful. Does anyone want to just hand me their money without getting any back? Usually, the answer is no, and especially when the project concerned generates a profit anyway. Incidentally, there's another market for at least some copyrighted works, which is an increasing effort spent on DRM technology. If it's legal for you to take the data I made for any purpose and I can't penalize you for doing so, then I'm incentivized to make it hard for you to copy it successfully. For the same reason, if it was legal for anyone to come attack you if they felt like it, you'd probably invest more in making it hard for people to break into your house, but if an attacker would go to jail for doing it, you may not need a fortress to protect yourself.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
