@Upso - oh come on, don't be squamish. They're perfectly harmless unless you grab'em by the arse and call them "Dahling".

Interesting attempt to break it up. But there's so many philosophical concepts of property to base legislation on, nevermind whatever the lawyers think they know about the issue. For example, if we go by Lockean labour theory of property, knowledge certainly must be considered property.

I've found myself thinking about the copyfight more and more in terms of one of the ideologies which inspired the swedish Pirate Party - information socialism. The advantage about that line of thought is that it lets you postpone a clarification of the concept of property, and concentrate on the ethics of access.

Because regardless of how you think of it in the sense of property, stored and aquired information is capital. It is a means of labour and a subject of labour.

Just as with other means of production, denying people access to information can equal holding their means of life for ransom, and is a form of exploitation. In a mild case, you could compare it to a lockout.

But since information is a prerequisite to all other means of production, information-based exploitation can get as glaring as extorting AIDS patients en masse by witholding their medicine, letting those who can't pay die.

Unlike most attempts at getting a coherent grip on the copyright issue, which mostly shuffles outmoded economic liberalist concepts around to see what happens, infosocialism brings copyright and patent issues into perspective as part of a choerent whole. This fight is about a lot more than free mp3's.

Sounds like what the sami noaide and nordic seidworkers get up to here in scandinavia. They're also travelling and announcing ceremonies - some take money, some don't. They make do with rune drums and chants, and I've never seen them make extraordinary claims like these, though.