I am a photographer. I DO support copyright laws, but I feel they are vague, nebulous, and almost certainly intentionally confusing.
Thing is, the creator is their own best protector from piracy. For instance, I have my photos on a website. I should be afraid that they will be "stolen", printed out, on sold by others. Right? I mean, how many people here have been to NYC, in the summertime, on broadway, or some other off streets...and seen the folks, immigrants, mostly, sitting out there selling artwork? I know I have. And I would say that 100% of it is stuff downloaded off the net and printed...and that's exactly what it looks like. See, my customers, people who would buy my prints, are not going to settle for low quality, low res images, like what you can get off the net. Remember, everything is 72dpi, online. Useless. To my would be customers, anyway. If I'm honest, the far far FAR greater threat to me are all the artists that sell their work, and along with it, the copyright, to stock photo companies, who buy them cheap, then sell them cheaper, in bulk...to other companies, like Ikea, who then print them up in bulk, saving millions of dollars as compared to how much it costs ME per print, or canvas, to create...and they sell those prints, which are, largely, beautiful, for 40 bucks a pop. I simply can't compete with that. Technology has made this possible. Now, you don't see ME writing my senator demanding a law to inhibit Ikea's, or even Bed Bath and Beyond's ability to do this, do you? Nope. I simply move on to other ways of making money.
The days of multi millionaire artists are slowly coming to a close. There are a LOT of talented people out there. The market is being flooded. Images, painted, drawn, photographed....doesn't matter. You can go onto flickr and see a LOT of truly wonderful work, on display, more or less for free. Sure, you could buy some of that work...and some, no, MANY, will. For now. But trust me when I tell you, this, too, shall end. It will soon become less and less profitable to try to sell it, and there will be more and more people that continue to make work, even though it's not profitable...which makes it cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, literally to the point that it's free. I see the same idea happening in music. It's BEEN happening, slowly, ever since the record was invented. Look on youtube. Plenty of musicians have their music there, to listen to, for free. Not famous ones, mind...but still wonderful talents, none the less. And they do that because they love it, not because they think they are going to make some money at it. Hell, I play the horn pretty darn good myself, and I do it for FREE, in a little 5 guy band, on saturday nights, to an audience. Why? Because I love it. And no one is incredulous about that, are they? No. Well, here's the flash...mainstream music is slowly gonna become like this, too, in the very distant future.
In the meantime, does any of this mean I support piracy? No, of course not. If it's not yours, and the owner doesn't want you to have it, don't take it. It's pretty simple, really. Not your stuff. But to be making this sort of deal out of it, to be spending more on the lobbying than you are actually losing to piracy...well, that's just bananas. It's the death rattle of a choking, desperate, empire. And make no mistake, big music is an empire that spans the globe. This isn't about the artists, nor was it ever, when it pertains to music, as it most often does. It's about the record labels. Always has been. We just have better tape recorders now.