First off, you're very thoughtful, and I'm having fun debating this with you.
If I seem defensive or sarcastic, it's really just rhetoric.
Entitled said:
However, just as many of my own examples can't be the basis of a formally enforced reward system, likewise the Internet is moving entertainment in a direction where the right to ban file-sharing is not a self-evident right that artists have, and they have to make do with a combination of respect, and alternate revenue models.
The examples
you came up with are very small-scale and incidental. You should feel somewhat grateful for the heat radiating from someone else's apartment into yours, but it'd be silly for them to demand 12 cent a month off you for it. Silly because it is such a minor issue. But when it comes down to it, if they're paying for every joule of energy their heater puts out, are they not entitled to come compensation from you, even if it would be farcical to ask? We let these things slide in real life, but from a strictly logical sense, you still technically owe them.
Let's follow your logic along, and come up with some less cherry-picked examples:
Assuming in each case, no other patrons miss out (in the short-term) due to your actions...
Would you ride a train without a ticket?
Would you sneak into a concert without paying?
Would you sneak into a museum without paying the admission cost?
Would you attend a lecture series without paying the lecturer?
Would you sleep in a hotel room without renting it?
Would you attend a convention without paying admission?
By your logic, you should also be entitled to do all of the above.
Entitled said:
For example, I feel entitled to wander around on the public streets and squares and parks freely. If a street fiddler would decide to try and lock down a large area with the justification that everyone walking past should be paying him for his music, then I would disagree, and walk past that street anyways, and even if it is a "deliberate, conscious decision that goes directly against the interests of him", then too bad, there is a limit to how much you get to limit others freedom of movement for your own benefit.
The Internet is not dissimilar from this analogy. It's a public area, where we share and access information. If some businesses start to lock down large segments of it, well, that might be necessary for our own good, but only in balance with our own rights... entitlements, if you will.
I highly disagree here. The Internet is not a "public place." It actually exists entirely on a series of boxes and cables which sit in people's homes and businesses; each person has the right to yank the cable out of their box. It's a little more complex than that, but it's definitely not a clear-cut "public park" analogy. But this is all beside the point of file-sharing.
Being prevented from copying a game is not akin to having a section of a public street blocked off. If you're a tax-paying citizen, public areas are built and maintained on your dime. That's where your sense of entitlement comes from: you have already paid for it, by paying your taxes. In this case, your entitlement is justified. In the case of a commercial game, which dozens of people have spent thousands of hours of their life creating, and to which you have contributed nothing, you are
not entitled.
The only way the above sort of twisted logic would make any sort of sense is if you contributed something of equal or greater value to society, for free, which the developers of the game you're pirating made use of.
Then your argument that "the fruits of human labour should be public domain" at least wouldn't be hypocritical. Its validity would be another matter.
