Just in case you're not noticing it (and I can understand why you wouldn't), your involvement on this topic pretty much consists of:

- offering an argument, - being shown how it is flawed, and then - ignoring the explanation you were just given, to fall back on a variant of "copying is free".

I think a lot of us readers would prefer it if you engage the arguments given to you.

Well apparently quite a few agree with what I am saying based on the number of upvotes I have.

What haven't I addressed? Your flawed premise that lumberjacking can be compared to selling CDs?

I can't see the rating that posts other than mine have. In any case, in this discussion, many of your comments (though not in this specific exchange with me) are grayed out (meaning non-positive rating).

What you haven't addressed is your inability to consistently apply your claims about non-IP-reliant methods of art production. Here's what happened:

You post (the one right before my first reply), showing indifference to the prospect of it being impossible to make a monetary profit from production of intellctual works.

Paraphrasing your comment, you say,: Real artists don't work for profit, so it's actually a good thing if production of movies, books, etc cannot earn a monetary profit due to people not respecting IP claims.

Then, I come back, and ask if you are so indifferent to the unprofitability of production of something else people want being rendered unprofitable due to widespread refusal to recognize rights therein, using the example of lumberjacking.

Due to your apparent inability to follow chains of logic beyond a certain depth, you felt it was sufficient to cite one superficial difference betweeen lumberjacking and creation of intellectual works, and considered it "case closed" and duh why can't this idiot see that they're different.

What you don't understand (almost certainly due to an unwillingness to) is that this difference, while true, does not invalidate the analogy I was drawing, because they are not different in the relevant aspects. What aspects?

1) In both cases, there would be a bad incentive effect on the valuable activity: the lumberjacking and intellectual works that need a profit incentive to produce, won't be.

2) In both cases, you can find some circuitous, inefficient way to reproduce the profitability that would otherwise come from simply recognizing rights therein.

In response to both of these similarities, and due to your inability to consistently apply the principles you advocate, you simply fall back on, "art can be copied, cutting a tree down can't". And that's true. But it means precisely nothing in terms of the above similarities.

Quite frankly, it's frustrating when you keep falling back on your standard line that they're different (in a narrow way), completely obvlivious to how it contradicts what you just said ("who cares if socially-beneficial activity X can't turn a profit [except by circuitous routes]?"). I expect better from people I debate with, especially on HN.