Free Software Foundation files suit against Cisco for GPL violations

That's pretty much the point. If you want to benefit from the freedom you receive in a GPLed implementation, then you don't get to restrict the freedom of recipients of your derived work.

Frustrating the efforts of those who want to restrict software recipients's freedoms is a big part of the design of the GPL. It sounds like the GPL is working as designed.

For those who are in the business of promoting free software (such as the FSF) the lesser GPL is primarly useful when GPLing a library would only encourage gratuitous incompatibility and not encourage the GPLing of more software. ... Such as is the case when the functionality the library provides is widely duplicated.

(If you don't agree with the goal, you won't like this reasoning… but this is not an unreasonable position)

I don't know if it's people not testing this case, or if the people going after violators concentrate on the blatant cases where no code is released at all.

Let's take a look at those creators again. Think it through, how does the elimination of a law granting a monopoly on /copying/ prevent people from taking photographs?

Hmm, it doesn't OK, so let's pretend that rather than conjuring up the bogeyman of /all/ photographers being "destroyed" you instead meant to say "the tiny minority of people who make their living entirely through the creation of photographs will no longer be able to do so". Well, suddenly that doesn't sound like a catastrophe any more, but we ought to address it, because you seem a bit unhappy...

Once again, though, the answer is "it doesn't". You can still pay a photographer, and a photographer can still choose or not to do what you tell them in exchange for money ("employment"). The role of the photographer, and their career path is changed, but not eliminated. There is no risk that things will go unphotographed from lack of copyright law, quite the reverse in fact. In the absence of copyright you can take photographs of things for which you'd previously have needed expensive or impossible rights clearances. Creativity is actually expanded.

All that copyright does is create an artificial monopoly. The monopoly isn't for the good of consumers (who can choose to pay for things, or not, in either system) nor for creators (who may get paid for creating, or not, in either system) but for another group, of which you seem to be a member, publishers, who get paid only if there is a monopoly, and who serve no inherent purpose.

That last bit is interesting, when copyright was /invented/ publishers were a relatively new idea, and they appeared to serve a very important purpose. The publisher had capital investment and he used it to make many copies of a work, which was a risk. If the copies sold, he made a profit, and this profit enabled to the publisher to continue to invest in making many copies of other works.

As you may have noticed, making copies of works became effectively zero cost some time between then and now. So did the marginal cost of advertising, shipping, and other factors. Publishers have gone from essential to at best a convenience and at worst a nuisance.

What copyright does in the post-scarcity era of digital information is distort the market. It creates the situation where your "small software company" writes software not because it needs software, and not even because someone else wants the software, but because it hopes, blindly, that lots of people will be willing to pay a small amount for individual copies of the software. And if you're wrong? The company goes to the wall. Copyright has made you a gambler. Without copyright, your company would exist to fill customer contracts, creating the software people want, rather than the software you hope someone might need.

Would it alter those industries? No doubt. For certain many of those alterations would be for the better. Would there be some losses? Probably, most would pale compared to the benefits. Unjust laws are unjust laws whether they have good or bad consequences. Regulating the abstract is unjust no matter what fancy names or noble goals you assign to it.

Physical property, i.e. property that is unreplicatable, needs to be regulated one way or another, whether you believe in personal property (I will claim everyone does), or communal property only. So any laws applied to physical property at least have a solid ground to justify their existence, with or without a government. The lack of regulation of physical property (with or without) government leads to obvious continual conflict.

If however, physical property could be replicated, it would be insane to think that it should therefore still be regulated. Why should I not be able to replicate my universe without you or anyone else in it? :) On what ethical grounds could anyone stand to prevent such a thing if it were possible? Religious ones only most likely.

What extra constraints do abstract replicatable things have over imaginary replicatable physical property that somehow mysteriously makes it merit regulation then? I will claim none. Unlike physical property, abstract things cannot be regulated without governments, it is unnatural. Imagine the dog claiming ownership to the idea of hunting in packs? Preposterous! But dogs certainly know who owns the meal they just caught. And if they caught it together they even know under what agreement, the alpha dog will get to eat first. No government intervention required, regulation of physical property is natural, even non humans do it.

Regulating abstract "property" on the other hand, is very unnatural.

I still remember as a child having been first introduced to copyright (and seeing others introduced to it), it was very strange! It was hard to accept that something might be morally wrong with sharing. I think the evidence today shows that most people still don't accept it to be morally wrong to share, even if they accept the need for the laws against it pushed on them from above!

I dread the thought of my children having to distort their minds to attempt to comprehend such an injustice when they become old enough. However, I have no problem with my daughter telling my son that a doll is hers (if it is). I do not cringe when she does, it is natural and healthy. I will not be upset if she resists him taking it physically. But certainly I am delighted when she shares it with him (on her own).

But if my son were to tell a friend (when he gets older) that his friend cannot hop skip and jump the same way he does or he will beat him up, naturally I would be upset (no matter how creative or unique his hop skip and jump is!) Copyright and patents only do the same. Why do they get so much respect simply because they purport to have some "noble" and unprovable goal to them: "to further promote useful arts and innovation", blah blah blah, or in your case, support industries that would be destroyed without them?

Yet, these laws do so much harm that is provable! Real harm, that each one of us can feel every time we want to share music or videos with our friends. Or, reuse a building block as software engineers. Or, the slightly more distant but still real harm of preventing drugs from being sold cheaply to people dying. This music can, undeniably, be copied at little cost, unlike the weak presumption that they would not have been created without the copyright reward. These drugs often do not cost much to manufacture, an undebatable fact, unlike the other weak presumption that they would not have been created without the patent reward. As for the software building blocks, I do not think that I need to elaborate on that one here.

Preventing us from sharing!!! How can we be so hypocritically constantly scolding our children with the words "share" and then telling them that they may not share the things that they could share so easily, abstract ideas, words, sounds!! Does sharing not hold any value if it does not entail sacrifice? Obsurd! Abolish anti-sharing laws now! :)

It is a crime that wild speculation over "potential innovation" can reduce people's freedoms. I don't believe those speculations one bit, quite to the contrary. By definition these laws restrict innovation! They prevent new ideas from being used by others, they freeze innovation in time since it cannot be expanded upon freely. That is a real consequence, no speculation required.

These laws are nothing more than protectionist laws. They ensure that whomever runs an industry today will run the industry tomorrow. The first comer has a natural advantage in any market, he does not need protection! If anything, the newcomers, the actual potential innovators do. The establishment does not need to innovate to maintain dominance, it only needs to prevent innovation. It is quite clear why these laws exists. Want to encourage innovation, remove these laws so that the establishment will continue to need to innovate to stay ahead. Believe me, I will not shed any tears if it destroys a protected industry, even one I work in (but fear not, it won't.) :)