Wall of text alert

I have a confession to make: I'm cynical about laws. I don't believe that laws are written to enforce what is right and just, or balance of crime and punishment, but merely to ensure a functioning society with a minimal amount of trouble.

One of the reasons for my position is that what is considered right and just varies considerably with time and place. Slavery, homosexuality are viewed in a very different light now from two centuries ago. Copyright law is no different.

Copyright law and the content industry are in my view evolving to protect artists in ways appropriate to the current technology. It used to be that possession of an official recording gave you the right to listen to the music it contained. Giving, selling or inheriting the physical object transferred that right. Copying was hard and caused loss of quality, so little needed to be done to stop people from doing it.

Nowadays, since copying without loss of quality has become trivial and widespread, the industry is moving to licensing. You buy the right to listen to the music, with eventual time restrictions. The right cannot be resold or given away. This is becoming both possible and necessary because of the Internet.

The key point is that when an old law is becoming increasingly difficult or impossible to enforce, the solution is not to introduce increasingly complex systems to enforce it. The law does not necessarily represent a moral absolute which must be enforced no matter the cost; it is often merely the most efficient means to an end. If it is not efficient any more, it is more reasonable to change the law in a way that attempts to achieve the same goals, than to turn society upside down to try to keep the statu quo.

Attempting to shame China and India about copyright law does not seem very efficient to me.