> Yet, as much as people believe that information ought to be free, it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would certainly work to rob those who may have spent countless hours developing such works of the commercial value of their efforts.

It's the other way. You cleverly switched the "ought" with the "fact".

What is a fact, is that "intellectual property" is not a real, tangible thing, like physical property. We only reason about IP in this way because we say it is. IP is made of words, the concept is willed into existence by copyright laws, and is only real as long all parties agree (or are forced to) to treat it as such, but the way it works is exactly however we collectively decide it ought to work.

That's unlike the concept of physical property, which is simply forced into existence, due to the fundamental properties of matter+energy, being that that what is not destroyed or created, nor goes away when you stop believing in it. Properties that actually apply just fine to information too, it exists in the physical world after all. It just represents such a minuscule amount of energy that it appears almost completely free, even when compared to just the energy required to entertain it as a human thought ...

Information isn't really free, people just get all twisted up about the fact that it's fundamentally worth very little, compared to almost anything else. But the information was never the valuable part. If you offer to clean my dirty kitchen, that's worth some value ultimately based on energy required to perform the service. Note you can only sell me this service once. If you just tell me about a clean kitchen, that's also worth some value ultimately based on energy required to perform the service--roughly the same order of magnitude as the value of the utterance "cool story bro".

We're really still very much haggling over the price of information. And the offers on both sides of the table are not even remotely in the same ballpark. Both sides are playing hard, using all the tricks in the book and out of the box.

And that's possible, all right, I guess. You can force or decide to artificially prop up the price of something way beyond its value. They do that with diamonds and probably many other things. There's some tricks that can make that work for a rather long time, even. But ultimately you're not extracting value from the thing, but a power differential that indirectly imbues the thing with value.

This indirection is a way to create an "ought", but not a fact.

Which is fine in principle, there are many "oughts" I support completely, making up what I believe is good and right. But I accept that I cannot argue those as "facts", but only in other ways, preferably based on an ethical framework (but if you must, any power differential will do).

Now, I believe, and I don't know if this is a fact, that the situation is untenable. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but I doubt even copyright law can artificially prop up the value of information indefinitely. It merely postpones the inevitable crash to its true value. For instance, I am an artist, I can make a beautiful illustration or piece of music, and give it away for free. Not all artists might want to, but enough will to kick the bottom out of the market, if slowly over time.

The only way to prevent me from doing that, is to forbid me giving away my work for free, or forbid/complicate the public domain. What is what would happen if I offer my work to the world, but I lack the control to keep it free, only for some party that will play the game, to swoop in, assume ownership and sell it as IP even though it is against my wishes. Which I hope you agree would be at least as bad a situation as today's content producers crying about piracy=robbery. Yet it is exactly what today's audio/video streaming services are lining up to enforce. Someone has to own your works as intellectual property, or they will own it for you.

And ultimately the content producers get screwed out of their rights, which I hope by now you also see coming from miles away, because the value never came from the content, it came from the power differential enforcing the concept of intellectual property.

As a content producer, I'd MUCH rather get screwed over by piracy (which is available to everybody equally) than giving the large "content industry" corporations the exclusive screwing me, giving them the power to enforce intellectual property rights however they see fit. But don't think for a moment that I, small time content producer, will be in control of my content for anything more than its fundamental worth.

And either way, as an artist, I'll keep producing beautiful things because I enjoy doing so. Regardless.

And either way, if you want to make a living off content production, the only way is to sell the service (commission), not the content. Regardless.