I just don't understand why people would consider something that someone else creates to be of no protectable value because it comes from the mind rather than a factory. But that's where this disagreement lies, I suppose.

Yes, I suppose it does. I just don't like the idea of victimless crimes, and I don't see any victimhood in theft other than the victim being deprived of their property, a victimhood not present in the Napster case, as the artists clearly still kept their own copies of the files. I view the protection offered by laws against theft, as being protection against deprivation; the protections offered by copyright laws obviously are far wider (as a matter of law), but I don't believe them to have the same moral foundation.

Suppose, as a thought experiment, someone invented a machine that could construct replicas of any object out of thin air -- so that grain, for example, could be "copied" at essentially no cost. Would it solve Third World famines for good, or would it be sued out of existence by the Farming Industry Association of America? If the latter, would you be rooting for the farmers to win?

Peter