DCE writes, "When we buy a book, we're actually buying a license to read that book." But you don't need a license to read a book: copyright doesn't regulate reading. Treat books as licenses, and you change the nature of books. Though I'm sure it was not your intent, by your reasoning we now need permission to read.

You treat licensing as though it is the "correct" model for books. But there is no "correct" model. Copyright is a human invention: we define what it is and what it does. This debate is not about finding the truth of what books are. It is a contest to determine what they will be. It is part of a continuing radical shift in the nature of copyright. It doesn't seem like a shift, for once we accept new definitions and new models (e.g. "intellectual property") we imagine we have simply discovered what copyright always was. It's a political struggle, but it's hidden, because n retrospect the conclusion appears to be logically inevitable.

The models and metaphors we use - ownership, buying, licenses, property, theft, and so on - are not simply questions of semantics. These models don't reflect reality, they create it.

if all digital media were completely free, everyone would benefit. I'd like to hear a historic example where this has ever been true.

Seriously? Science. Mathematics. Early blues and jazz music.

There are many goods for which property regimes are inferior to other arrangements. The management of fish stocks, for example, air pollution, and road networks - public goods in other words. The cost of taking ideas, which are public goods, and treating them as private goods turns out to be very high - and increasing. At some point the costs exceed the benefits.

The example of Russia is spurious. We need protection for land (for example), therefore we need protection for ideas? That's a rather strained analogy. Why not extend it to feelings and create property rights over love?

The costs and benefits of rights over ideas are best understood by examining rights over ideas (and over particular kinds of ideas - music and software are not the same), not by drawing vague comparisons to other concepts. For specific analysis, see Coase's Penguin and The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler, and Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding by Mark Lemley.

Oh, I see. I should have said "copyright", not "DRM". I was disputing Mankyd's suggestion that DRM increases value and is therefore good, not advocating piracy.

Wow. I didn't expect my argument to be linked to piracy. When I said that DRM diminishes the value of the idea, I meant that the value of many ideas derives largely from their popularity. Windows, English, and Happy Birthday are examples of this. If only I spoke English, it wouldn't be terribly useful. Ideas like this are most valuable when they are most abundant (though in the case of English, that logic has the unhappy side-effect of driving other languages to extinction).

This is not an all-out attack on copyright - simply a restatement of economic orthodoxy. (Economics has its failings, but it is what we are talking about here.) The intent of copyright is to incent creation at the cost of economic inefficiency. Unfortunately, there is a lack of empirical evidence for or against protection. We really don't know how well it works, what level would best encourage creation and maximize distribution, or whether alternatives would be better. Yochai Benkler writes,

both in theory and as far as empirical evidence shows, there is remarkably little support in economics for regulating information, knowledge and cultural production through the tools of intellectual property.

It's important to distinguish between copies and the idea itself. When copies are abundant, the copies become worthless - but the idea itself increases in value (at least in most cases - secrets become worth less when they are abundant). This value can compound very rapidly due to network effects: examples are MS Windows, the English language, the song Happy Birthday.

When I say value, I am not talking about price. Many of the things we value most in life are free. DRM may increase the value of copies, but it generally diminishes the value of the idea itself, resulting in an economic loss.