Do you value copyright more then living in a free society? Because you will not get both, I promise you.

[Quote]“… The only reason we have intellectual property laws is because it helps people make money.”[/quote]

Well, people may “make money” under the current copyright regime, but that hardly means that money is being created; it is merely changing hands. No, what you are talking about is not the government helping people to make money, it is the government deciding that one group of people should have the right to prevent others from making money.

The pattern here is that the people who have made it to the top push for monopolies that will lock in their positions as kings of the hill and prevent people who do something better from replacing them. It’s a power grab.

If you know the birth of the original concept of copyright (as an outgrowth of mercantilism for the purpose of censorship). If you know the history of copyright, how when the first copyright law was created, it was certainly not to disable derivative works and certainly not to restrict them to every other country in the world.
It was certainly not so you can own any ideas. All copyright ever was were a set of State-granted privileges to forcefully remove competition.

Everyone has a right to be compensated for their work if they so choose to receive compensation. When you work for an employer, you may demand payment for your labour. You could also work for free as a volunteer. It is up to you. But Intellectual property rights is merely an exploitation of the results of the labour. The real question is not whether intellectual property rights are rights worthy of legal importance, but how to determine the limitations of this exploitation. How to limit the extent of this injustice.

“What you are talking about is not the government helping people to make money, it is the government deciding that one group of people should have the right to prevent others from making money.”

So you must ask yourself, do you value copyright more then living in a free society? Because you will not get both, I promise you.