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If you haven't read Bounty Hunters by Greg London, you really should give it a go.

He describes the struggle of society to reward creators in analogy to paying bounty hunters to track criminals. It's a good analogy, and the analysis in section three is good. He spends time talking about making copyright have the proper length so that artists create, but not so long that society pays too much. I must admit that before reading it, I was skeptical that copyright could ever work or had anything to offer. He convinced me that it can be a good system, but there must be fairness in the term of protection.

The last flesh-and-blood discussion about copyright I had was very illuminating. I publish in science, and generally see copyright as getting in the way; I believe ideas that I come up with make me more valuable, rather than having external value (they could be useful for others to learn, then they've increased the value of their labor). But I spoke with a friend who writes fiction. Naturally, she had a different bend. She wanted to be compensated for her work and she didn't want any other writer writing substandard work with her characters, diluting her vision. There were just different issues between knowledge-based creative product and entertainment-based creative product. I would write more about how I disagreed with her, and thought her fears were unfounded, but it seems unfair to do that without a chance to respond

Monopoly rights on thoughts are some of the most important things facing our society now. We've developed a system where the physical reproduction of these things (text, music, images) is dirt cheap, nearly free, and it is forcing us to reconsider exactly what copyright and patents mean. The "Intellectual Property" crowd has a lot of money, and I think they are dangerous. We need to forge a new compromise between creators and society that maximizes creative output. That will require negotiating the "price" of that work in terms of monopoly protections.

A better metaphor: http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/bountyhunt ers.htm
and an apropos short story: http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants. html

You're right about that. You're not going to argue ethics -- in the sense that you state what logically follows from certain ethical principles. No; you're just going to throw out ethical conclusions as though they're unquestionable when in fact they're hotly debated. You take the "public domain" to be an aberration -- or one of many options available. Wrong. The public domain is the natural habitat of ideas. Jefferson knew this. You have to back up the aberration of copyright with either a pragmatic or ethical argument.

"I also do not think that we should..."; "they should not be required..."; "all humans have a right to survive on their skills". these are ethical propositions that have to be supported with a theory of what is right and wrong. Sorry, but they are.

The last hilarious thing is: you insist you don't want to construct an ethical theory, but w/r/t the other line of reasoning -- the pragmatic one, viz: copyright stimulates science and art -- you agree with me almost perfectly. If "the effect of such change [a 5-10yr copyright] would be negligable on the music and game industries" then Why is the term 100+ years? Why is the State granting 20 times as much stimulus as is needed to achieve roughly the same result? Need a hint? okay:

M_____ Mouse

finally: A good read, explaining clearly the inferiority of the "property" metaphor to describe the nature of creative works.

Copyright and Patent law can only be enacted to promote science and the useful arts. And congress should promote science and the useful arts as cheaply as possible. Therefore Congress should be protecting Open Source, not feeding it to the Proprietary dogs. http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/

If programmers are willing to write code without the reward of software patents, then there is no justification to raise the reward to include them. Whatever happened to getting work done by the lowest bidder?

read more: http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/

Towns offered rewards for Bounty Hunters to bring in the bad guys. When the Bounty Hunter starts paying the Mayor money and the Mayor keeps raising the rewards, then the system is completely gone out of whack.

http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/

fighting men in wartime

actually its a bounty offered in advance to anyone willing to bring in a new discovery or writing.

http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/

Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP law