[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Gimple

rhetorical, facetious, disingenuous, idiotic. you can use lots of words to describe it.

why do you resort to insults when you run out of arguments? seriously. i haven't called you an imbecile or a pie-in-the sky lunatic or any of that. i have responded to your arguments, maybe not to your satisfaction, but i haven't resorted to ad-hominems because that would mean that it's not about understanding, but about winning.

maybe you just want to win at all costs.

the basic fact as i see it is that the existence of copyright and intellectual property creates a marketplace. and in that marketplace we have incentives for invention, innovation, and intellectual creation.

remove those incentives and the best minds will move to other activities-- stealing, maybe. or war- since without a market the best way to get stuff you want is to take it by force. or politics, which is the same thing-- acquisition by fiat.

honestly, i'd rather deal with a merchant than with some petty warlord or a tyrant. markets are far from perfect but they are better than the alternative. the bourgeoisie with all its faults has been better for humanity than feudalism.