...when Findlaw's Marci Hamilton is on the other side:

In a culture without copyright, only the rich, or the government-sponsored, could be this culture's full-time creators. Poor artists like Loretta Lynn would have to flip burgers long into their music careers - and might even give up on music entirely.

This is quite honestly ridiculous in every way, shape, and form. The idea that without copyright as currently envisioned performers could find no way to make their way in the world, and could not sell their wares, shows a level of ignorance which shouldn't be allowed at Findlaw.

First of all, most musicians, until they make their recording contract and even for a long time afterwards, make most of their money not through fees for record royalties (which are trivial in many cases) but through fees for performance.

Secondly, she's looking at a pipeline of products and saying, "without strong copyright laws, these things wouldn't exist." But does she (or the RIAA) put forward a convincing argument for this? The country singers making 'rags to riches' stories might still be there under other business models that shall never bloom because copyright law is held in the dead hand of the technologically indifferent. In the meantime, she doesn't see the hundreds of country acts that might be there if a different system, more tolerant of a greater product pipeline, were allowed to grow.

(Full disclosure: I don't use Kazaa or Napster because I don't like the idea of breaking the law, but I'm willing to admit this is as much cowardice as principle. Also, I'm as great a country music fan as anyone I know, although Loretta Lynn is not to my taste.)

Nevertheless, the industry continued to hemorrhage, dropping approximately 8% in sales last year. The culprits may well be the new websites, such as KaZaa, which, unlike Napster, do not depend on centralized servers.

Again, has Ms. Hamilton noticed that the good economic times are over, and that luxury and entertainment products get hit pretty hard in a recession? Has she pondered whether exposure to Napster causes more purchasing of music among users than otherwise, and maybe, just maybe, the fall in music sales isn't primarily a fault with Kazaa?

And has she pondered that, at least among students, the economic impact of CD burners is likely to be as great as file-sharing, if that were successfully suppressed? You're talking about environments that spend a high amount on music and have access to multiple ways of copying digital media. Does she really think that stopping Kazaa will cut down on the digital 'piracy' of music?

Again, I'm all for respect for the law. In an ideal world, I'd hope people would change the law, and then their behavior. But to act like copying music, in other words breaking a 'property' right that is nothing more than a created fiat of law, is tantamount to actual piracy, or even the theft of a physical object, is a moral leap that I'm not willing to make. Is this political disobedience? Yes. But are those who are making this into the death of the rights of property, or turning this into a case of 'respect for the rule of law' stressing themselves over nothing? Oh yes most certainly.