Jonah: My point was not that copyright laws are always bad, just that they’re artificial and contingent. Obeying them is a moral imperative only because reverence for the law is “the political religion of the nation,” whereas the moral evil of genuine theft pre-exists any man-made law. Also, I’m not saying that loosening copyright law (by, say, shortening the period of time that the copyright holder has exclusive use) is a strategy for addressing the sewer of popular culture; but if less filth would be the result, as proponents of tighter copyright law claim, so be it.