===Challenge===
We can from this point either degenerate to bickering -or seek consensus on what's ethical or not.
===Response===
The ethics part of this is a two way street. And this is, as I see it, where most of the problem comes from. All we ever hear about is the college kids that are using P2P to rip off the "artist's" intellectual property.
<snip>Much clear and reasonable logic</snip>
Ethical responsibility of consumers to content creators. Ethical responsibility of content creators to the general public.
You can't have one without the other, else you create an unsustainable system.
===New Challenge===
Well spoken. Yet content creators who strongly defend their right to maximize profit believe that they are doing so because of ethics. They justify their position by saying that it is their ethical responsibility to persecute all who "steal" from them.
It is wise to draw attention to ethics, and to put the responsibility upon the giver and the receiver. Both of these you have done.
Yet how do we manage the folks who believe that they are ethically responsible when they are not? They cannot be persuaded by an appeal to ethics because they already believe they are abiding by a noble ethic.
-Jared
p.s. Hint 1: For an ethical system to be superior to another ethical system, it must apply _less_ force in implementation. Brute force is the lowest form of ethics. What is the highest?
Hint 2: I think Linus Torvalds has a pretty good idea of it, but a lot of people who "follow" him do not. And as near as I can tell, he's okay with that. ;-)