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I think we are arguing about what copyright law should be, rather than what it is. One of the points of politics -- this is a political site -- is that laws can be changed and people can express views about what the law in a process that ideally can change what the law will be in the future, for the better.

You've just pointed out that things got worse since the Berne Convention inflicted life-of-author plus 50 years copyright on most of the world. This in no way invalidates my point that Van Gogh's starving was not a result of lack of copyright: he lived the last few years of his life in France which was signatory to the Berne Convention.

Nor does pointing out what is have anything to do with what ought to be. Telling me what copyright law is in no way changes my view that current copyright law is wrong, any more than telling me that abortion on demand is legal changes my view that it should not be. Why did you bring up DRM? Nothing I've posted, other than a waggish reply to a remark about The Pirate Bay, is in any way based on a critique of copyright as "depriving" people of free goods, but entirely on the dileterious effect the current combination of long copyright terms, expansion of copyright to imitate the French droit d'auteur (like life-plus copyrights another legacy of the Berne Convention), and its reificaiton as property has on the creation and propagation of culture.

You continue to argue as if my position were that copyright should be abolished. Unless your next argument somehow addresses the fact that I am really arguing for a return to the terms of the Law of Queen Anne (and the identical terms the first Congress under the Constitution gave), not the abolition of copyright, I will not reply.