> ""People who are creative can stil create things as much as they like": no, they are constrained by their budget and time. Piracy destroys the potential for remuneration on the back of e.g. recorded music, thus restricting the ability of the artist to create. Stop pretending like all worthwhile (by which I mean to say in-demand, whether legally or not) art can be made on a Sunday afternoon by a single person."

I never said anything about piracy in my reply nor I implied it. I guess I can assume machine learning and AI advancements pose a similar threat? So it would be wrong if there was something which would make creating art less profitable, such as for example computer aided creation of things? I mean of course that would put a few useless people out of their jobs when machines can increase the productivity enough. Horrible? Not really, cheaper art for people and increased amount of "indie" art in circulation. I'm all for it.

> "- "Artsy person...": I resent your suggestion that art is axiomatically a hobby, and those that create it -- "artsy persons", really? -- are all mere hobbyists. You seem to value music/film/etc. enough to unilaterally grant yourself unlimited rights to it, yet you use belittling terms, the better to convey your perceived superiority (presumably because you think programming requires more intelligence?) when discussing it. Not cool."

I guess the word artsy carries a negative tone, it wasn't my intention to imply that. Bear with me for not being a native English speaker. However, my whole point has been that the whole discussion about piracy revolves around people who are not doing art as a hobby but who are reliant on being paid for what they are doing.

> "- "who can't adapt to the ever-accelerating technological progress we're going through": Yes, we musicians are all such idiots, we simply don't get revolutionary rockstar technologies like node.js and mongodb."

Interesting, "we musicians". Spot on. However, again it seems that you are purposefully(?) missing the point. If we can recreate art with ease and as such we need less producers and distributors, what's the big deal? They go out of job because technology makes their work obsolete? It's a shame, but if there's something we can learn from the past, it's that you can't stop technology from advancing. My friend as a cab driver will lose his job once self-diriving cars become mainstream. My friend as a cashier already lost her job because of automation. Millions are going out of work at Foxconn during the next few years because of advanced robots. It's everywhere, technology reigns supreme and people go out of jobs at exponential rate from now on. Things change.

> "- "we can now share information": Please stop invoking lofty principles like liberty and the right to information to justify your consumption of the latest hollywood-made blockbuster movie or pop single without compensation the artists who created it."

Justify my what? Your assumption is completely false. Even if it were true and I actually did consume mainstream entertainment and especially without compensating the artists the fact that we can now share information easier than ever before holds true, and will (hopefully) hold true in the future too. After all services like youtube, dropbox, Mega etc. are here to stay and for obvious reasons. Oh and there's an increasing number of truly anonymous content sharing sites in Tor network. It's pretty fascinating where we're going IMO.

> "Of course it would be ideal for me not to whack you on the head with a club and take your possessions, but it's just not realistic in a strict sense; at least not without sacrificing vital liberties and the creation of a police force with godlike authority."

Your comparison is completely flawed and you know it. Do you understand the implications of total surveillance of the Internet in regards of freedom of speech for example? Or do you not care, as long as you get paid for your job?

Anyway, in case you haven't noticed it yet, we're moving towards a world where the copyright laws have less and less implications in our actions. Not only will the laws be reformed to make more sense, content sharing and distribution will increase just as it has to this day. Some people will lose their jobs, some artists will get less compensation for their work(for other reasons than piracy though) and so on. It's only natural. If this scares you, then just maybe it would be better for you to work in a different field? Because as I've said, you can't stop technology from advancing, and it advances at an accelerating rate. Exponential growth is a bitch.

> "Comments such as these never cease to astonish me"

Oh the irony. :)