In the event that I make statements that seem impolite, let me preface by saying that I appreciate the response, the thought that went into it, and the neutral tone you've taken in your response to my admittedly off-the-cuff remark.

I am aware of, and understand the premise of the 'copyright is wrong' party, and I was perhaps remiss to have excluded it from my earlier response, but the point was more to give edw some reassurance that he isn't alone. He seemed genuine in his question, and as I took a long time to type my response, there weren't any like-responses when I started writing (I was in the middle of something.)

So, to the issue at hand, which is thankfully not the "can't copy a car" sort of tripe I'm used to dealing with... I suppose my biggest trouble with the 'copyright is wrong' argument is that it seems to argue from a point of 'morality', meaning that it "isn't right" to restrict information or, to coin the old phrase, "information wants to be free."

The only good reason I can imagine for that stance (and I'm happy to be informed otherwise) is that it deprives them of things. What I think is 'right' is to give the author of a work the ability to do with it what they will. If they choose to share it, then great for them. If they choose to share it without the ability to reproduce it, I'd suppose that was within their rights. Just as it is within my rights to build a fence and disallow people from knocking it down. Those who seek to encourage open source also make that choice, just the other way; But they've still chosen to have their work treated how they wish (or not, in the case of MIT/public domain licenses). Even in open source, the author's wishes are to be respected, and I don't fault them (or closed source products) for having made the choice that they have. It's their work, they should control it as much or as little as they like.

Whether or not copyright is right or wrong (and I am certainly not going to suggest that it's perfect, or even necessarily 'good',) the author of a work, even in open source, is effectively licensing their work, but with a particular set of constraints. If a company uses GPLv2 code and does not release the source, what is the expected reaction?

I think that the biggest issue for me is that (at least in the arguments I've had) the proponents of eliminating copyright feel that it will promote the arts, and that it will remove restrictions keeping artists from flourishing but, at least in every scenario I can think of, it also removes the ability of an artist to make a living from their work as well as they could otherwise. If artists can't afford to pay their rents on their art, then they'll either stop producing it altogether, or produce less of it. Perhaps that will be offset by the newly unencumbered artists doing covers of whatever the current hot song is, but that doesn't exactly promote new creation either, and leads to a losing proposition for originality in art.

Effectively, the distribution costs are so low at this point, and people can clone music / pictures / etc so quickly, that in the absence of a controlled distribution, it's quite possible that a new song could get 'link-jacked', and its creation could be attributed to a copier with better promotion skills, making promotion more important than originality, which takes us 360 to where we are, only perhaps worse.