Thanks for a lot of great comments.
After cooling down a bit from when I first heard this news, I think I have to agree with your take.
Copyright and patent protection are an extension of the representative government we have been blessed to have and are not an extension of natural law. Natural law protects the ownership of the crop a person plants and harvests but not of an idea, not of the pattern of ink on paper or the one’s and zero’s in a digital file. It is not illegal to copy movies in a nation that is not signatory to a treaty protecting these “rights”.
If I were Congress, I would exercise my Constitutional authority to remove ip protection from anything prurient, obscene or with gratuitous violence and profanity. If Hollywood wants to exercise its freedom of speech, they should do it for free.
Men like Larry Flynt would never have become icons or be among the rich and famous if the laws did not provide him this protection which has not followed the Constitutional guideline of “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”.
But, like you said, there is no value in downloading trash. If something is worth watching it is worth paying for.
My current frame of mind though would not make me the kind of juror a lawyer representing Hollywood studios would want on the jury. When these people make it impossible for Christians and conservatives to make a living in their industry, should they really enjoy the protection of ip law? To me it is about as moral as Muslims forcing infidels to pay a special tax that Muslims do not have to pay. Should Christians submit to such unjust laws?
I think a meritocracy approach will work just fine in a “We The People” government where “We The People” also willingly exalt God. When we exalt God, God exalts us too.
We can’t impose top down godliness, ironic as that sounds. And the example of selective intellectual property would be just one such attempt. Let the filthy pay for filth if they cannot be persuaded otherwise. Jesus came as a poor servant for a reason. He requests to be enthroned in the lowly heart. Then He will make His way into the castles of kings from there.
Let’s forget what’s “moral.” Does something exalt God, even in a pro forma way? Then do it. Does it come short of God’s glory by purpose? Then shun it. (Things can come short because that’s the best we can muster under the circumstances. That’s a different situation. That is not intentionally sinning. It is covered by God’s grace. And in fact it’s endemic until we get through the pearly gates.)
God made His kingdom simple to live to. It has to be if children can enter! It’s “grown ups” who try to cobble it up with complications.
Your problem is that the exercise of such discretion represents a latent tyranny. Think of the persecutions that once existed among Christian sects founded upon and justified by minute distinctions in doctrine of which most of the victims were probably unaware. Christ taught one heart at a time, and to Him there came multitudes.