Finally, some good points
[I had more to say in this post, but I'm already at the limit for post size]
"The Pirate Party quite specifically restricts creators access to markets. It does so by removing the choices are creator has to sell their creations in the marketplace. It also removes the protections they currently enjoy."
No, not really. They aren't calling for abolishment of copyright, although a 5 year copyright period is a bit on the short side with a minimum of 10 years being far more reasonable. So, during that 10 year period the creator still has full control over when and how his work is sold. As for the "protections", there is some change there, although not anything your average person is going to notice, as most of the new "protections" are just attempts to prop up the inherently flawed (and massively abused) concept of DRM. Strip away all the stupid DRM laws and restore fair use exemptions and we'll be back to the reasonable copyright protections we've had in the past without losing anything that actually makes any difference to the creators.
"Care to name some? Korea doesn't count ;-)"
Napster, BearShare, iMesh, MP3.com, Pandora, etc. For some more you can check out the list the RIAA publishes [1], or just google for legal mp3 download. Some of those mentioned use a P2P model, some don't. The exact fashion in which the music is distributed is less important than the fact that it can be. Several times now the record companies have also attempted to establish their own subscription based P2P music services, although I can't say off the top of my head if any of them ever got beyond the planning stage. As for legal P2P services for other kinds of content, that's much rarer. For instance, I'm not aware of any P2P ebook service, although there are of course quite a few legal sources you can purchase ebooks from, and particularly with the launch of Kindle, Nook, and now the iPad those services should be seeing pretty good profits.
"More than 80 per cent of people here said they'd consider paying for a P2P music service, but there wasn't one on offer."
Mostly there isn't a good one on offer. The record companies are really shooting themselves in the foot over this one because they're so scared of piracy that they handicap everyone's efforts to offer a good service, and end up killing the services. Then they use the failure of the services they killed as an excuse to say "see, legal services don't work", when in fact they only failed because of the choices the record companies forced them to make. Apple has been a boon to the industry because they had enough weight to force the record companies to accept some decisions they didn't want to make, but even then there's a lot that even Apple can't force them to do. There's also the danger that the record companies are starting to realize which is that Apple will essentially replace them as the maintainers of the distribution monopoly.
"Oldies stations, which didn't exist until the 1980s, by definition play old records."
True enough, and yes, the musicians that created the music they play would not receive proceeds under a 10 year copyright. Once again though, I'd really question how much proceeds those musicians are seeing as it is. What might also be enlightening is how much the record companies receive as opposed to the musicians. My original point still stands though, as even an oldies station only plays a small fraction of the music that was produced more than 10 years ago, and therefor represents a relatively small portion of profits from music sales.
"A five or ten year copyright would rob performers and composers of their performance rights."
Actually no, the performers would still have their performance rights after 10 years, it's just that everyone else would as well. Just because they lose the monopoly on being able to perform a piece doesn't mean that they couldn't anymore, just that it gives others the opportunity to perform it as well, although realistically I don't think that's as much of an issue. Bands often play other peoples music (so called cover songs), and may or may not pay for the right to do so. Officially not paying (or otherwise obtaining permission) to perform the piece is illegal, but it's not particularly well enforced, particularly in small clubs with local bands.
"I think you mean "sound recording" - the CD is merely the container for the bag of rights that a recording encapsulates."
No, a CD is a container for the recording, the physical medium. The rights are held by the creator, or in most cases the producer the creator sold the rights to. This is one of the points where things start to get a little tricky, particularly with the fair use rights. The reason for this, is that you have two different sets of rights in one physical item. That is, you have the physical rights of the CD, which means for instance you're allowed to re-sell it (right of first sale), but you also have the fair use rights that cover the copyrighted work, which covers things like format shifting. Now, this wouldn't be an issue if there was only ever one true copy of the work in question, but that's not how things work. For instance, you can take a CD you've purchased, and rip an MP3 from it. So far, everything's fine, no rules violated yet. Furthermore, you could take a CD you purchased and sell it to your friend (without paying anything to the record label, or the artist), and once again, everything's still kosher. The point you begin to run into problems however is when you exercise both sets of rights at the same time, that is for instance you rip a MP3 off the CD, and then sell the CD to your friend. Furthermore fair use means that you could duplicate the CD for backup purposes, as well as other purposes such as having a copy you keep in your car, as well as one at the house, and maybe a third at your office. All those copies are perfectly legal as their exempted from copyright because you paid for the right to have that CD already, and you're merely making it more convenient for you to do so. Once again however you run into problems when you start distributing any of those copies. In short, it's never the act of making a copy that's illegal, rather it's the act of distributing copies.
"That's a bit like saying Van Gogh's pictures realised their true value in his lifetime."
They certainly realized their physical value in his lifetime. Collectible value is a bit harder to define of course. If I make a duplicate of Van Gogh's painting, and manage to sell it as an original (ignoring for now fraud statutes), does that make the true value of my duplicate equal to the original? Value is subjective and will naturally vary over time. Perhaps what I should have said originally was the production cost of the CD as opposed to its true value, as really there's no such thing as "true value".
"For sure, under a Pirate regime creators would be able to perform tricks for corporate sponsors, and perhaps even the State."
So, nothing new there? What do you call signing your rights away to a record label? The only difference would be how long those rights you signed away would last.
"But you've taken a lot of choice away from the creator and taken them several steps back from the economic opportunities they previously enjoyed."
No choices have been taken from the creators, except perhaps limiting their ability to sue for bypassing DRM (sort of a separate but related issue, I actually care somewhat less about getting all the stupid DRM supporting legislation off the books than I do about reducing copyright length). As for economic opportunities, a shorter copyright period would reduce the length they could enjoy those opportunities, but once again for the vast majority of content producers there would be little noticeable change there. On the flip side, a reduced copyright period would allow more works to fall into public domain, thereby allowing society as a whole to benefit from and expand on those works. For music, this is less beneficial as music tends not to really build on older works all that much, at least not in any way that's protected by copyright, but for television, books, and programs (in particular) this would be a major boon to creativity.
Anyway, I'm glad to see you arguing your points now without resorting for the most part to Ad Hominem attacks and other poor tactics, and you actually made one or two good points. I'd say the biggest problem with this discussion now is that there's so many different arguments going on it's getting hard to cover all of them. For instance, there's the discussion about what the Pirate Party hopes to accomplish, and how their policy choices would affect things. There's the discussion about whether copyright even needs to be reformed. There's the discussion that most people have been ignoring about privacy rights. There's the discussion about other alternatives than the Pirate Party's on how to reform copyright. Then to further muddy the waters there's the confusion within copyright itself that doesn't distinguish between music, books, paintings, television, movies, or programs, even though each of these is vastly different from the others.
I'm definitely interested in seeing your responses, but I'm not sure if I'm going to continue to comment anymore, as we could probably keep at this for weeks without getting too much farther.
[1] http://www.riaa.com/toolsforparents.php?content_selector=legal_music_sites