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I have all the contemporaneous articles and testimony before Congress. You dear sir are twisting his words and thoughts of others at that time. Just as you have morphed "Fair Use" into "Free Use". Fair use originally was the idea that there were some uses which were truly in the public interest, parody and reviews for example.
If 1000s of books were stolen from libraries across America in a single day, library officials would immediately put heavy-duty security systems into place. Department store owners, similarly, wouldn't be idle if people were taking entire racks of clothing.
But some seem to think there's nothing wrong with doing what is essentially the same thing when it comes to intellectual property. As if stealing isn't stealing if you can do it with a computer in the comfort of your home or office.
The truth is, there is no difference between shoplifting a DVD from a store and illegally downloading a copyrighted version of Gideon's Great Adventure (lol). Stealing intellectual property is just as wrong as the theft of "real" property.
The vast % of the estimated 800million files being "shared" at any given time are owned by someone else. Theft of copyrighted works is THE predominant use for file sharing. The Registrar of Copyrights wrote that making a copyrighted work available on the internet, "constitutes an infringement of the exclusive distribution right as well as the reproduction right."
Your "Fair Use" piracy costs real people real money. Piracy profiteers offer interesting if self-serving theories, claiming that illegal downloading is either neutral or even beneficial to rights owners. However, the dilemma of creators is too real to just theorize away.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that, "An owner of property who seeks to take it from one who is unlawfully in possession has long been recognized to have greater leeway than he would have but for his right to possession. The claim of ownership will even justify a trespass and warrant steps otherwise unlawful." Copyright owners should have the same right as other tangible property owners to stop the brazen theft of their property.
Instead of stopping piracy, Baker and his ilk propose that copyright owners simply hand over their property rights and let the government set the fee for downloads of their works. Not only is this suggestion antithetical to the notion of property rights, it is absurdly unrealistic. You want technological advancement? Let government do it and ineptitude unfolds. Look no farther than the FCC they have been stifling technological advancement for 70 years.
Many pirates want to blame creators for piracy. Claiming they have caused the problem by failing to embrace technology and change their business models. They pose that copyright owners allow free distribution and downloading of their works and then generate revenue by selling advertising or offering enhanced services.
Pirates also intimate creators are too stupid to recognize that illegal downloads demonstrate great untapped consumer demand for their works on-line. They believe that people who have invested real money in the creations don't want to capture new sources of revenue from that investment. Hogwash.
James Madison once said, "government is instituted to protect property of every sort." I guess Madison be damned too.
Stealing is stealing no matter the devices or conduits used.
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