OK, cool, so it's OK if I come to your house and "share" your TV, your car, your computer, and anything else I can find without your permission?This is utterly idiotic. Nobody here is arguing about physical property rights.
What is the "freedom" that is being taken away by content providers and copyright holder saying you cannot distribute copies of their stuff?The "freedom" is the fact that ideas represented in digital form can be duplicated and disseminated for zero cost. The fact that there is inherently no scarcity to the medium, lends itself to the idea that it was a medium meant to be free of restriction in regards to duplication.
However, we are attempting to apply concepts of capitalism, which requires scarcity to function, to the realm of ideas, which have no inherent scarcity aside from the original creation of the idea.
A piece of software is an idea just as much as a movie, a song, or a book. As soon as it is represented in digital form, it becomes information rather than a scarce object, and thus is subject to a whole different realm of natural law.
However, copyright holders would have you believe that this is not the case, and that "piracy" == stealing. Under the current legal system, this might be the overwhelming status quo, but there's nothing that naturally says that creators of ideas have property rights to those ideas.
So remember, IP law is the result of a system attempting to artificially create scarcity in something that isn't scarce to begin with. The freedom that is being lost is the freedom to share information, because we have decided that it's easier for companies to make money that way. Well, no shit it's easier for companies to make money that way -- and that's the problem, in that it ignores the desires of the public and shifts the balance toward IP-hoarding companies.
Why is warez sharing different from me stealing your car, and giving it out to whoever wants it?Utterly idiotic. If you can make an exact duplicate of my car without harming the original car, and give it out to anyone who wants it, feel free. Otherwise, your analogy is without merit.
Score:1