My thoughts on Intellectual Property and Copyright Laws

I'd like a world without unreasonable copyright laws and software patents, and a world where trademarks would be restricted to prevention of fraud. But for as long as copyright laws are lame we should for the time being turn it to our advantage whenever and wherever we can. To quote from the GPLv3:

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users.

This is the completely opposite attitude of proprietary software! The GPL encourages you to share the software. And sharing is what pirates do.

In other words the GPL not only wants you to share the binaries, but also the source code and so the GPL aligns itself perfectly with pirate ethos. For a proprietary software company, having the software pirated might result in lower sales, but losing the source code would be considered catastrophic. When you have free software you always have access to source code and most of the time binaries.

PIRATE IT! Fuck intellectual property rights. I don't care what the law says. I get to do whatever I want with the software because I can!!!

Interestingly Medieval people where smart enough not to make nonsensical copyright laws. Ironically people's attitude to intellectual property is returning to the Middle Ages despite technological advancement or perhaps because of it.

Read http://torrentfreak.com/ and tell me today's copyright laws are sane. What we are seeing is the clash between the need of people to exchange information and the infinite greed of copyright holders.

Freedom is extremely important to me, and I want that to be legally binding. I will diligently comply with requirements of the license. If somebody violates these rights I will lobby the FSF to sue them into compliance. I support the FSF in such cases not because of I like copyright laws, but because they ensure we have the freedom to run our software the way we want. When the FSF takes action against wrongdoers, it's not to keep them from distributing the binaries, but to make sure they distribute the Corresponding Source (CCS), so you have the freedom to change the software to your needs or to get someone else to do it for you.

tl;dr: Usually copyright holders use copyright laws to restrict your freedoms, but the FSF use copyright laws to protect your freedoms. So it's consistent to support freedom protection while opposing freedom restriction.