>You're stance on this takes away the rights of creators. The creator's rights are no less important than the consumer's rights.

My stance on the matter is that copyright takes away from the general public in the first place. It's not justified, and abolishing therefore means restoring it to the way it's supposed to be. Sorry, but I don't accept copyright as a given something whose abolishing we have to justify. On the contrary, the burden of proof lies on the advocates of copyright to show that it is justified to take away from the general public to hand a monopoly on non-scarce resources to private parties. And I am quite positive that it isn't.

>Copying is not stealing technically but when something that is meant to be paid for gets copied and passed around free it does become stealing.

No, it isn't. Stealing has a strict definition: I take something away from you, which you lack afterwards. Copying involves no loss. No, not "lost profits" either. It's bullshit. Applying the word to copying is just a pathetic appeal to emotion.

Funnily enough, labeling us "pirates" in an attempt to villainize us has probably been the greatest thing the entertainment industry has ever done. It was adapted as a proud, if sometimes self-ironic label, and eventually spawned an entire political movement which now operates in pretty much all western countries with varying degrees of success.

>Arguments about software being non-scarce don't apply.

Oh yes they do. Waving them aside like that doesn't change the fact that existing software is most definitely non-scarce. There's no limit on how much you can copy it. What you are talking about is the creation of software, which falls under the same category as claiming that without copyright, there would be no music.

>Should authors only be paid for one copy of their book?

If you consider writing a book a service, then basically yes, s?he should be payed once. As every other artisan providing services is. There were even business models like that, with varying degrees of success (ask for sum $x, release book under public domain when $x is reached).

>Why is it wrong to have a choice?

If that choice conflicts with reality, then no, you can't have a choice. And reality is that you cannot and should not be able to stop copying and sharing. It's pointless and largely impossible without extremely draconian measures, and, again, highly unethical to attempt to do so.

Oh, and you have quite a choice. You can either release your works and deal with the fact that they will be copied and shared - or you don't release anything.

>so why is it that the anti-copyright crowd insists that creators should not have the choice to charge for what they create and should gladly give away their work for free.

But we are not. We're just saying you can't stop us from sharing. Those are two different, though related things. I can only refer you to the GPL as a good example for this: while you cannot demand access to source per se (and you can charge for a copy of the program if you do so choose), you cannot demand that others stop giving access (share) either. It's basically the golden rule. I cannot demand you to give me a copy of your program. Neither can you demand that I stop giving a copy I received from where-ever to other people. Your rights stop where mine begin. Copyright infringes on my right to share.

>But at the same time I don't see a way for me, as a developer, to continue to make a living off my work in a world where it's legal for anyone to distribute my work freely against my wishes.

Well, that's a pity to heard but ultimately not of interest, as hard as it may sound. As I have said multiple times, distribution as a business model is dead. The horde of copyright-dependent zombies which are still crawling around are a danger to our future society and need to be put to rest as fast as possible. If you can't adapt and find new ways to make ends meet, then I'm afraid you will have to find a new job.