Crosbie, it’s not civil disobedience to gorge on media funded by big corporations. It’s “let them eat cake” for children raised on TV – “let me eat cake.”

I don’t think copyright is a fundamentally good thing, by the way. I think it’s a convenient handle for regulation of the content industries, mostly driven by demand from content companies for favorable treatment in the courts.

But I don’t blame people for hustling to make a living. That’s how democracy works. Vigorous jostling between interest groups is the substance of popular rule.

Abolitionism is a plausible ideology. If you want to go there, do it. But the content that attracts file sharers is the content funded for the purpose of exploiting copyright. Nobody’s sharing home videos on BitTorrent. They’re sharing American Idol. The death of copyright is not what you’re seeing there.