> Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value.

What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say hypothetically in the future stealing a car becomes easy and without consequence (even though it's still illegal) does that mean there is no market value for cars? Of course it doesn't. It shows that people care more about saving money

If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music, the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.

The convenience argument is also (for want of a better phrase) complete and utter bullshit. I can switch to itunes right now, type in a search term, hit purchase and have the song on my hard drive (and iphone and any other device I have connected to my itunes account) within 10 seconds. Hell, I'll open my screen recording program now and record me proving this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2wzb0-4Pg

People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it. It's not a matter of convenience, people go to more effort pirating than they would purchasing (except for cases where the music is not available commercially, but those instances are "rare" and not a worthy consideration for the sake of this argument).

Please don't conflate tangible goods with intangible goods. Intangible goods are patterns. You can't steal a pattern, because a pattern can't be "owned" in any sense that a physical object can.

Now, you can have rights to a pattern and that right stops others from exploiting that pattern commercially, but you don't own the pattern. Even our current laws recognize this. After all, your right will expire, but if you own a car, you own it forever and without limits.

So enough with this "theft" bullshit.

The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is. Same as with those patterns of yours -- the laws could easily be changed so that you own the pattern always and forever. It's quite pointless to argue about the shoulds of the situation based on current law.

When we're talking about incentives for production and utility, it actually makes quite a bit of sense to conflate cars and music. They have many similar properties. On the consumption side, you do have to consider the added utility of making the music free, though, because some people will be able to consume it who otherwise wouldn't have paid.

I disagree. I think it's part of the current social code/contract, not just the law. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA ads say exactly that - "you wouldn't steal a car" - because they know people find property (particularly personal property) to be something we have a right to.

Copyright, on the other hand, is only unquestionable by the law.

Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same. Laws are indirectly derived from the social code, so just move my statement up a level. You still can't answer the question of how the social code ought to view bits from how it currently views them.

Sometimes the social code is wrong, and those who believe that copyright piracy is bad for society are making the case that this is one of those times. Simply observing the current state of the social code in no way counters those arguments -- although some of them can be countered other ways.

That's the thing: I don't believe they are. 46% (70% for young adults) of the US citizens admit to have committed copyright infringement. Almost no one agrees with large fines or with cutting off the connection for infringers.

I think there's a big disconnect between the social code and the law.

So too must the public attitude towards filesharing define our laws surrounding it. The majority of people have, without caveat, expressed through their actions their belief that filesharing is, and should be, a normal and accepted part of society. This may rankle those whose paychecks are predicated upon the status quo, but it doesn't affect our shifting morals. We are a people who accept and embrace "copyright infringement". It is only once this reality is accepted that the content industry may move forwards.

The important question is, if you take the root beliefs and walk back up the tree, do all of the beliefs come to an overall support of free copying? Then you do that in aggregate for society, taking into account uncomfortable truths about the economics of music production and advertising where necessary and on a level individuals won't when they derive their inevitable personal free-riding preferences. Going from high level feeling to high level feeling ("I like file sharing" -> "file sharing is right") does not work. Almost everyone says that they would prefer to pay less tax too.

To put it another way, there are plenty of things people would do if they could get away with it. Not paying taxes, driving as fast as they want, tossing cigarette butts wherever, etc. Your exact argumentation could be used to say, "Society's views about these activities need to change," but that's not actually the case. All you are observing is that people will take advantage of situations where they can get away with something, even if it's not ultimately good for society as a whole. In no way do I accept the norms that you're deriving from this. Rather, I should say that I don't accept the way you are deriving them. My personal jury is still out on whether I think filesharing is a problem that needs to be addressed more or less forcefully.

It sounds like you have strong opinions on the topic -- I'd love to hear more about how you think people justify copyright infringement.

People don't justify anything. By saying that something needs to be justified, you are suggesting that this is a moral issue? It's wrong for me to copy patterns of bytes? If so, then I've been a sinner since I was 10. Remember those 5 1/4 floppies, BBSes, IRC, etc? Yeah.

Copyright law was designed with businesses in mind, not individuals. Fair use should be expanded to encompass all personal use of patented or copyrighted material. Restrictions should only apply to commercial application.

Speaking of business ...

Did I mention I create digital works every day? That's what I do. I create software. My work can easily be copied ... and if it was, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself. Actually, I wouldn't even blame myself. Because my rampant "piracy" as a kid made me realize something. There is no value in software. There is only value in service. The software I write is merely a tool that I use to render a service and even if you copied it, you would only be left with a tool. I'm the final part of the equation and I can't be copied. That's the right way to do software.

What people don't mention is that the software industry was first. Before music, before movies, before books, before any of that ... the software industry was forced to change, more than that, it was born changed, because digital "piracy" was born with the software industry.

But I still think the ideal in software should be for a tool that just works and is intuitive enough to not require training. There are a lot of tricky problem domains where that's unlikely to ever happen. Such is often the case with ideals.

> There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service.

And then assume I meant something else.

> But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it.

Shame on you, sir.

> I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.

I think this is very much the wrong way to have a civilized discussion, despite your wit.

For what it's worth, I don't agree you should be downvoted. But you also have made it hard to have an actual discussion by casting everything as right/wrong type of situation and then clearly dictating what is right or wrong. That really makes it hard to have a civilized discussion because there's no seeking of understanding, just refutation.

No you don't; the car must be titled, road-legal, emissions tested, insured, and you must be licensed to drive. Those are some of the limits on owning and using a car. Physical possession doesn't constitute a natural right.

More generally, you shouldn't pretend like you can divine human law from physical constraints. Human law serves humans. Property law serves humans. Laws might want to take into account the nature of intellectual property as bits, or they might not, depending on what is practical and desirable; but the bits are an implementation detail.

That is not true. All of those things are necessary to use a car, not to own one.

Also, you mentioned earlier that mere possession does not imply rightful ownership. I totally agree, as would anyone who has been the victim of theft.

> And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it.

He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content:

  The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the metadata
  was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never
  sort properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazon. 

What are you saying? Are you advocating for harsher consequences and more enforcement of existing law or more DRM? It's unusual to see so many luddites on HN. Personally, I'd prefer to see modernization of IP laws.

That's a tired and no longer relevant point. His point is that people will pay for the convenience of acquiring media, and then presents an example of when it was convenient to him (purchasing an ebook when the pirated version was sub par quality). However, as I showed in my video example, iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate, which shows (to me at least and I would hope everyone else) the issue is NOT acquisition of content or convenience, it's saving money.

Also no I don't think people should be punished more harshly for media piracy, I don't ever want to try and comment on the proper legal approach because I don't understand enough about the law to do it properly, but my basic thoughts on media piracy have been previously outlined here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694764

Piracy happens in most cases because it's FREE, this is the #1 reason, the fact that Spotify etc. are finding success should be the absolute proof: Spotify is free (or cheaper, if you pay for a subscription) than purchasing music, that's why people use it. Convenience is not a valid or relevant reason for (most) media piracy any more. There are some cases (such as acquiring the entire discography of an artist or group, which can't be done easily through any pre-existing product) which makes piracy more convenient, but the common use case of media acquisition (a single song or an artists latest album) is not part of the convenience.

As for prices, yes, iTunes is also much too expensive for many things — when I can buy a physical copy and have it shipped crosscountry to my house for a fraction of the cost of iTunes' lousy crippleware, something is wrong — but that seems beside the point. Yes, a lot of piracy happens because it's free. Most of that piracy doesn't really seem to be replacing sales and so isn't really relevant from an economic standpoint. Those people just want something for free. It seems like the point where piracy really becomes a problem is when it's the superior option even for people who could easily afford to buy your wares.

iTunes still isn't the most convenient source for many things. My one experience with iTunes was trying to buy an album from a French musician. I spent several hours creating a fake French account with a legitimate French address and tracking down a French iTunes gift card. I had to give up, because the artist didn't take the time to manually check all 300 locales to include his album in.

You consider that 'solved'? The artist never got the money I was actively trying to give him.

This is the utilitarian, simplistic, convenient and completely false view. People are definitely NOT perfectly rational beings working towards their maximal, personal profit. This is why, BTW, libertarianism is a silly, childish pipe dream.

Coming back to the subject, people are perfectly aware that taking someone else's physical good may harm this person directly, that's why it's always carefully regulated by many told and untold rules. Even the most small, primitive societies have mechanisms for goods exchange and appropriation.

Digital goods aren't goods, they're information; when they're shared, the originator keeps them. Nobody never sold "information", only convenient, easy or practical access to it. People never bought "music" in the form of CDs, they bought CDs as the way to listen to the music they wanted.

I disagree with this completely. There's a tremendous desire for oxygen. Literally every human being needs it nearly every second of their life. However, it has no market value because it's freely available wherever you go. You're basically saying that price should be determined solely by demand, regardless of supply. You're ignoring fully half of economic theory.

Yes, there is a huge demand for digital copies of music and video, but there's also an infinite supply of them.

I look forward to that day so we can all have awesome hybrid vehicles that run on garbage. I suspect people will also be able to make awesome mashups so I can get an EV Jeep pickup or a 2012 convertible beetle.

I think you've missed the parent's point. We have left the world where pirating is impossible. The question is how to deal with it. Thinking in unrealistic hypotheticals does little to inform the debate.

It's more important to think about utility, because that can help us answer the question of whether the government and laws should be used to create market value where there is none by trying to make a good excludable.

Are you saying that 46% of US citizens* would steal a car if it was consequence free? Because I'd like to see some evidence of that.

* The number who have said to have committed copyright infringement.

And then, after they do that, they will spend countless hours writing message board posts on fora all over the Internet about how their speeding tickets are elaborate scams set by the government to raise revenue. Their justifications are almost as elaborate and refined as those of music pirates.

(I'm not on a high-horse here; I speed too.)

"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.

That's still just an assertion.

> an even greater majority of American drivers will disobey road safety laws (most commonly the speed limit) which are statistically shown to mitigate traffic fatalities.

And that's far from obvious, actually, especially when it comes to speed limits which you single out. See for example this analysis from the Cato Institute:

> Despite the fact that 33 states raised their speed limits immediately after the repeal of the mandatory federal speed limit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last October that "the traffic death rate dropped to a record low level in 1997." Moreover, the average fatality rate even fell in the states that raised their speed limits.

http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/speed-doesn...

But stealing a car always has consequences: someone has one car less. Saying that people would steal cars if the stolen cars didn't disappear from their owners is illogical.

On the other hand, disobeying road safety laws doesn't in fact have consequences most of the time: people rarely get hurt. And it has been demonstrated that people are terrible at evaluating odds. So the situation is far from analogous.

"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.

It's not my argument. I was just questioning parent's claim about stealing cars.

This is not at all the same thing as being willing to steal somebody else's car just because you know you won't get caught. In that case, you know that you are creating immediate harm to that person. People weigh that differently from a vague chance of killing an abstract person.

Another way to ask the question is to say "What are the consequences of stealing a car from your neighbour?" and I would say the answers would be "Legal (theft), moral (I have taken someone else's car) and financial (I have saved money on a car)". If stealing a car was consequence free then none of these would matter.

Then the questions I have are; why is copyright infringement free from moral consequences while car stealing isn't?

The moral consequences differ because the consequences differ.

But they aren't depriving me of my tobacco. The two are different, which is why the morality of the two are different. Nobody denies that being able to get the police to enforce a monopoly has value, but it's not the same kind of value as the ability to enjoy smething for its intrnsic value to the owner.

Different kinds of value, therefore different kinds of morality. I'd say that the right to monopolize bits has nothing to do with the bits and everything to do with taxation or rent-seeking.

I would also think that the relative value of the items makes a difference ethically. Assuming a song has a value on the market of $1 and a car has a going price of $10,000, the car is four orders of magnitude more expensive. Imagine if only one person could own a song at a time, and that song was valued the same as a car. I don't think you would see the rates of copyright infringement that you see today. For this same reason, I disagree that if car theft became consequence-free, many people would do it. The moral consequence is derived from the value of the object you are depriving someone of; a car is far more valuable than a song. Additionally, there's the ethical consequence of depriving someone of transportation, while taking a song does not really have any effects on a person's quality of life.

People will do all sorts of crazy things if the system allows them to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

I do think that's incorrect, but there's a broader picture issue that makes this irrelevant: Why does it even matter?

You're misunderstanding the original argument. Of course it's possible to make some money for selling something that is free. Specially if you convince people that it's not free, and that you'll go to jail if you do otherwise. But what they mean with "there's no market value", is that it doesn't create any new value to the economy. It's just money changing hands. If you ask me for 5 bucks and I say "yes, of course, no need to pay me back", we didn't just magically create value in the economy because I payed you 5 bucks for nothing. The value in the economy is the same, that's just money changing hands.

If I pay money for a copy of a song, that's just money changing hands. It didn't add any new value to the economy. If I didn't pay money for that copy of the song. The song would still be there. No change in value.

Unless, of course, if you make the argument that music would cease to exist if we start sharing it for free. Which I would honestly rather not get into.

so basically $10 per CD, everyone CAN AFFORD a wall full of CDs, lets say 10,000 of them, but they choose to steal instead? OK.

As for convenience, I may find it more convenient to download music from TPB or a college FTP than from iTunes, because I don't want to deal with their installer or give away my billing info. Convenience is an utterly subjective measure.

(also, your car analogy is shitty and bad and you should feel shitty and bad)

Of course - because once they have your billing info, they can actually bill you and your bank account will decrease by the cost of the CD.

So you pretty much proved his point - you just don't want to pay for something you can steal.

For every band you've heard of and hated, there are several you've never heard of, but probably would enjoy.

> keep a day job

"Producing less of it" because they can't earn enough to do it full time. There would be more people in that boat if, in my thought experiment, they earned absolutely nothing from their content. I don't think we'd actually ever reach that point, but just think about it as a 'what if'.

Also: some bands sell CDs, some give them away, lately fewer are selling, but instead are giving away passes at download sites. Even those that sell the CDs give away at least half if not more of them, because they would rather people listen to them and come back for the next show, and tell their friends, making $3-10 per person per show, than make $10 on the CD one time.

Now, how about authors?

As for authors, I wasn't talking about them, and I'm not going to play strawman games with you.

Authors are producers of 'information goods' too, and I hardly think such a large category of people constitutes a 'strawman'. It's an issue that to them is very real - musicians can sort of fall back on performances, but authors can't.

How many artists produce one-hit-wonders and then do basically nothing else, living off of payments? How many other artists produce more in their free time (Zappa, Waits, Infected Mushroom) then others do in their career (Chinese Democracy lol).

I would like to see copyright shortened to 2-5 years for exclusive distribution rights. I would like to see attribution requirements extended to say, 100 years. If you want to use the work, fine, but make sure you mention your work's pedigree. (altho at some point, its going to be either so known and part of the cultural zeitgeist that you don't need it and attribution requirements become a burden, or it won't matter, hence the 100 years). I would like to see unauthorized distribution fines go down to something reasonable, say 200% of the nominal cost at time of distribution + any profits made, and a reasonable fine on top of it (say $100). Since most people distribute for free, we should treat file sharing the same as a speeding ticket not a life changer - the fine system keeps the worst of the offenders relatively at bay. (it is bullshit position to think we should stop every last one of them every last time)

As for business models that work: Why do we need to know up front? Seriously, this here is a disingenuous argument. Instead, do like the tech industry does: stop propping up a bad business model with laws, and let the giants fade as better models come along and take their place. As the big companies decline or innovate, new ones will come along and mostly fail, but at some point, one will figure it out. I once heard someone say "silicon valley is just a big monte carlo simulation of business models". So lets just do that.

> giving away CDs at shows to keep people coming to the next show

No band in the world does this. They SELL CDs at shows, because it's one of the few ways they can generate enough cash flow to buy gas and food.

Basically my point is, they won't decline the money, but they still want their name out there bad enough to make the trade-off. Particularly when it's download coupons rather than CDs (which have an up-front cost). Similarly all the recoding studios in my town are booked up solid, and the better dozen or so sound engineers are never hurting for work. (And this is a pretty small town, 200K pop in the greater metro area).

No, and that kind of comment is not welcome here, either.

Information goods most certainly are scarce if you look at the effort it takes to make a song, a movie, a complex piece of software. That time and effort is not free. 'Dreamed up' is a lot different from 'sat down and worked hard on it for months'.

Come on now, you've been here long enough to know that's not how HN works. It's about basic respect towards others--not just to the poster, but to all of us here on HN. As a developer (and someone who runs a development shop?) you know that developer time is important. A comment is 10 seconds to write but will be broadcast on a site like HN to be read by many over many cumulative hours. Say those things which are worth saying to 100k hackers, not those things which are not worth saying to one.

You run a C-based dev shop out of Houston. I run a C-based dev shop out of Austin. The probability of us doing business together IRL is unusually high. Now when we meet, I'm always going to be thinking of you as that guy who gets into flamewars and insults others, instead of the guy who writes beautifully-commented crypto POSIX code.

I can go to great lengths to explain that the copyright/IP battle is uphill, and that every talking point parroted blindly and every baseless assertion made without logic is just more deadweight we have to work against, and that the (relative few) people trying to work for a better future can't afford to treat unsubstantiated remarks with anything less than full-on ridicule and insult. That's all well and good.

But, really, this is about respect, and regardless of how I feel on the topic, I crossed a line in what is otherwise a place of civil discourse (and the occasional lighthearted troll).

Thanks for calling me out on that.

Please try to avoid this.

In a comment starting with such question and attitude you'll very rarely find anything worthwhile...

>How many songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published? How many love poems are written and not saved? Content is far, far from scarce.

So, songs/stories "dreamed but never published" and poems "not saved" mean that content is ...far from scarce?

For one, "not published stories" are as good as NO stories at all, with regards to scarcity.

Second, we are not talking about every BS story everyone thought up at some point as content.

We talk about actual worthwhile content. Most of it is done professionally. Or, if you want to avoid the quality judgement, most of the content people WANT and DO consume, is done professionally.

If the creators weren't compensated there would be less of that content. And , surely, not of equal budget and scale. You can't record "The Wall" or film "The Matrix" without getting paid. Except maybe for some talented multi-millionaire, doing it out of passion. Not many of those around.

I don't think many would take an interest in "songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published".

The person I was replying to was trying to contend that content is scarce. I showed that, no, it indeed is not. Had they put in your caveat that undistributed content might as well not exist, I would've cheerfully argued and perhaps ceded the point. But, their statement, as given? Wrong.

Also, you claim (as does everyone else in this debate, it would seem) that creators must be compensated or less content will result. You cannot prove this, or if you can, you have not shown a reasoning chain that results in it. Use logic.

EDIT: Downvote away, but for chrissakes at least provide your reasoning. What is this, reddit?

It would be better if you spend some time to understand what they MEANT with by "content" in their statement, instead of attacking their statement "as given", i.e with only considering the more basic meaning of the word content.

Also: it's not just that "undistributed content might as well not exist", it's also that content not done to a level the public wants "might as well not exist". Even if you distribute (say, online, on YouTube) your "movie" made with a camcorder, it doesn't mean it will replace an actual, budgeted movie, for the majority of people.

>Also, you claim (as does everyone else in this debate, it would seem) that creators must be compensated or less content will result. You cannot prove this, or if you can, you have not shown a reasoning chain that results in it. Use logic.

Why don't YOU use logic? I don't have to "prove" anything, it's obvious.

1) People produce content for two reasons: for free and because they are paid to do so.

If they are not paid, the second reason ceases to exist. (If you don't believe that some of the professional content creators would not produce stuff if there were no money involved, talk to some of them). A lot of content is not produced "out of passion" at all, but solely for money. Justin Bieber songs, hollywood blockbuster, etc.

2) Content creation costs money. If content is not paid, expensive content will not be produced by anyone, even those that do it out of passion. A money, which can get to $100 million budget easily, is expensive content.

3) Content creation takes time. If professional creators cannot do it as a full time job, they will work some other full time job, and if they still feel the urge to do it out of passion, they would do it on their spare time. Again, volume will drop.

I can make a lot of things abundant, for a time, with similar violations. But that doesn't mean those are right, or an intelligent way to get along with other people. No one but the strongest and sneakiest have an interest in the economy of what you can get away with.

This has a few advantages - the utility of music is generally unknown at the time of its production. Popularity, especially, adds utility to a piece of music and is very difficult to predict in advance. In fact, I think popularity dominates the utility that many content consumers derive from music. Sometimes auteurs manage to produce something that defies your expectations and gives you much more utility than you thought it would have.

If you retain the right to seek rents on content you've produced, you're able to charge what's appropriate to the utility that consumers currently derive from your music, rather than what they'd have expected to when you made it (nothing, if they'd never heard of you!). If you can't seek rent on the products of your labor, then you have to get compensated for it directly. Currently, musicians do this mostly via live performance, but I suppose holding content for ransom via some sort of kickstarter-analogue might be a viable way forward.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that there's less money in that sort of thing than rent-seeking, but I'm certainly not an expert. If there's less money in it, then there will be less high-quality content. I've thought about it, and I think I'm okay with that. If the market for recorded music contracts due to digital sharing, I think I'll live, and I'd prefer digital sharing to remain possible.

It's unfortunate for musicians, but I guess I'm just a callous soul.

If something wasn't scarce--e.g. information sans copyright--then anybody could get it without paying. This is a practical reality that copyright attempts to change by legal means; the argument is that the legal means impose a larger cost than benefit on society.

You could probably shoplift all the bottled water you can carry, every day, and you still would not deprive another customer. 7/11 would simply keep shipping in more water so they would have product to sell. (Of course they would also get some cops in there to try and stop you!)

Eventually, if they're not making enough money due to all the shoplifting, they might stop carrying bottled water. But that won't be because they ran out of supply; it will be because it's no longer profitable to do so. This is analogous to a movie studio deciding not to make or distribute certain kinds of movies anymore because it is no longer profitable for them.

What about the store? Surely you're depriving them of the bottle of water, right? Again, not really. The store does not actually want to possess so many bottles of water--what they want is to make money by selling bottles of water. And if you look at the economics of the transaction, that's primarily what you're depriving them of. Let's say a bottle of water is priced at $1.50. 7/11, who buys in bulk and then marks up, probably paid $0.50 or less for that same bottle. Thus when you steal it, 66% of the harm is in foregone revenue! Only 33% of the harm is loss of property value. Again, this is analogous to copyright infringement, where the primary harm is foregone revenue, not deprivation of property.

And your are misunderstanding even more basic economics: being able to take something (or a copy of it) without paying, doesn't mean it doesn't have value either.

Value is where there are people willing to pay.

And people ARE willing to pay for music and movies.

So, the problem is not that the content has no value, but rather that the payment step can be bypassed very easily.

But bypassing payment easily != the thing has no value.

This very much follows economics.

(and stop conflating utility with market value...argh....)

We're talking about monetary value -- i.e the ability of the item to generate money.

No, just demand.

You can simulate scarcity with access provision. Else you don't get to have an economy in the digital age.

People talk like this is something new, but it's not. Sun Records made Elvis's singles. Nothing even in that analog era prevented ANY OTHER COMPANY to reproduce and sell the same singles and not give Elvis a penny. Nothing, that is, except the copyright law.

This also holds for software licenses. If digital copying means "forget about copyright law" (a prerequisite to declare that "scarcity is finished") then why should anyone respect the GPL license any more than Metallica's copyright?

You can't simulate scarcity with access provision. We've solved that. We wouldn't be having this same stupid tired runaround if access provision worked or could be made to work without being repugnant.

As for the Elvis singles, those were physical goods, housed in physical places, with physical companies. This is vastly different from people giving away byte patterns to one another--and the sooner this is accepted, the sooner we can all productively talk about it.

As for your GPL license...

I'm willing to wager that, shock, there are a lot of companies that use in-house tools having modified GPL source without publishing their changes. I'm willing to wager even more that in developing nations there are lots of IP violations of that nature occurring.

Your law means nothing if it cannot be enforced.

In short, I can modify the GPL source of an application all I like if it's an "in-house tool", and I am not required to resubmit my changes. It's only if I attempt to sell it or redistribute the application in some way that I am required to.

That is not an IP violation.