Spoiled children

Charles Petit at Scrivener's error laments the

"maturity level in the file-sharing debate" which "would need to improve to be properly compared to a third-grade recess. Let's just say that I'm disgusted by the whole matter."

No one escapes his wrath:

"On the one hand, we have the artists claiming that not all file-sharing is bad. Well, it's not. I'm a strong proponent of author (in the constitutional sense; I include musicians, artists, etc.) control over copyrighted works. If the copyright holder agrees to redistribution of materials, such as through file-sharing, that bloody well should be good enough. The problem here is that too many of these "authors" have, for years, allowed the various publishers (again, in the constitutional sense) to grab too many rights and assert too much control. So, instead, these authors are frequently asserting rights that—whether "morally" or not—simply aren't theirs to assert...

On the second hand, we have the doom-and-gloomish ISPs (et al.) claiming that any restrictions at all will result in the collapse of Western civilization, and not incidentally in their own demise. Wake up, children: Somebody, somewhere, is paying for the communications networks used for file sharing. They're not "free."...

On the third hand, we have the "entertainment industry"—an industry that invests less in its "raw material" than does virtually any other segment of the modern economy. It, of course, is whining about how threatened it is by the various new technologies. Just like it did when it became possible to broadcast films on television; just like it did when xerography became so cheap that it's almost unconscious. That some of this third hand has substantial investment in the second hand just makes the intellectual dishonesty that much more repulsive...

On the fourth hand, we have a significant proportion of the public that wants to get its entertainment for free...

And then, on the fifth hand, we have an even more significant proportion of the public that just doesn't get it."

He has a point.