"I can get it free on the Web" -- just an idea

This is a long, complicated conversation that doesn't need to be gotten into.

But the short answer is yes, authors deserve to be paid for their work, but no, that does not automatically legitimize the concept of intellectual property.

 

You can read his book for free by getting a library card and checking it out for a week or two. You can go to the library and read a hard copy of a newspaper or magazine for free. And, instead of paying to access archived newspaper articles online, you can sit yer ass down at the microfilm machine.

You always could. What you couldn't do is take what you got for free at library and mass-produce it for public consumption -- whether your goal was profit or merely drawing attention to yourself or your cause. The information always was free for those who were willing to expend effort to get it for free -- and, perhaps, waiting for someone else to finish reading that book or periodical first. At issue is whether the convenience of having it on demand ought to be free, whether the content's owner ought to have control over that decision and whether others ought to be allowed to piggyback on the content owner's efforts at no cost.