I'm not suggesting that we get rid of copyright altogether. I'm saying that the system has been used and abused by big media. The DMCA is but one example of this.
Except you said this:
Copyright may have been a good idea at one point, but the way it is used now is mere corporate welfare.
Now, forgive me if this isn't what you meant, when people say "X used to serve a purpose, but now it just does this negative thing" they're traditionally arguing that whatever they're talking about is
no longer necessary at all. I agree that copyright law needs reformation - quit with the extensions, expand what counts as fair use, etc - in order to properly work within the digital age (as opposed to solely trying to force the digital age to work within it). I also feel that media companies need to work harder to meet the consumer halfway - Star Trek II presumably turned a profit decades ago, why does a digital copy of it cost $4.99? There might actually be good reasons, but pricing transparency might be nice - but the fact is that piracy is still taking something that you do not have the right to distribute and distributing it as you see fit. If Marvel Studios decided that it wanted to release The Avengers to the Pirate Bay tonight at midnight, that would be their right (though Disney, Paramount, and movie theater owners would have a collective aneurism) because they made it and they own the characters.
There is also an inherent difference between making a mix CD and putting a work up on a torrent site - mass production. Your mix CD goes to one person, a torrent can reach millions upon millions of people. It is the difference between giving your kid a beer every so often and reselling beer to minors out of the trunk of your car. Both are illegal, both would be considered immoral by some, but the reach and scale of the former makes it almost impossible that anyone will ever care. Also:
ost movies (at least the big Hollywood productions) succeed or fail on their opening weekends, when people pay upwards of $10 to sit in theaters and watch 20 minutes of commercials before the movie even begins. Those people who pirate such goods may not have the means or the desire to pay for what they copy anyway--the economy sucks, and the quantity of movies/music released is greater than quality, so the "lost sales" argument is weak, at best.
1) If someone feels a work has value but is unwilling to pay for that value, they're a cockface. In my opinion.
2) The twenty minutes of commercials is what is helping keep snack and ticket prices at their current level. No, I don't like them, but I like them more than the alternative.
3) While a film is considered a "success" or "failure" based on its opening day, that doesn't mean it can
never turn a profit. There may come a day where, between syndication and DVD sales, John Carter turns a profit for Disney. So the "they're a success or failure on opening weekend, therefore piracy is OK" argument smells like bullshit to me.
I have no problem with people who are god damned honest about what they're doing. Don't be fucking proud of piracy,\ or try to come up with moral or economic justifications for it. Admit you pirate, that it's illegal, that you probably shouldn't be doing it, that there might come a day where you may have to face the consequences, but that you don't really care right now. Forget the sticking it to the man bullshit, if you were really sticking it to the man you wouldn't be consuming his art.