Straw man

A straw man argument is one which misrepresents opposition to an extreme position by excluding the middle ground. The middle ground here is to seek a more balanced form of copyright which does its job, of incentivising new work to the limited extent this is needed, but which does no more.

So I'm all in favour of limited and balanced IP rights, such as were described in the US constitution, when terms of 14 - 30 years were thought appropriate, and when the idea of suppressing non-commercial copying in order to maximise the business interests of commercial publishers would have been considered abhorrent. Literature and sheet music were then commonly copied non-commercially using pen and paper.

Copyright law exists to incentivise creativity and need not be legislated for more than this modest need, either by :

a. denying privacy of communications in respect of non-profit making infringement (e.g. HADOPI, DEA) or

b. through suppression of the freedom of expression of programming thought and related speech claimed to threaten copyright enforcement (e.g. the conference paper which resulted in Dimitry Sklyarov's arrest under the DMCA and Sony's litigous bullying of George Hotz ) or

c. through suppression of the freedom of speech in saying where allegedly infringing non-commercial content is located (SOPA, PIPA) or

d. by extending copyright further into the future than needed to do its job, making creation of new works referential of old works more difficult and expensive, thus defeating the original purpose of copyright.

Copyright advocacy makes a bad name for itself through the absolutism of media interests willing to trample upon any other established human rights in pursuit of copyright revenue maximisation. These are the absolutists, not those of us who in awareness and consideration of rights other than copyright are challenging these excesses and are proposing a more balanced and defensible position.