"Intellectual Property" is a very new concept and is not the same as Property. We invented a system for rewarding creativity that was abstractly designed to resemble physical property law. But it's not the same thing, because when you copy a movie you are making a copy, not stealing the original.

I agree that Intellectual Property has value and shouldn't be abolished entirely. But new technology calls for new ways of thinking about the world. When VCRs first hit the market, Hollywood threw a tantrum and tried to make them illegal. The Supreme Court had to stand up and say they were okay. Today Hollywood makes a fortune off of DVDs and VHS that wouldn't exist if their idea of what was "theirs" to control had prevailed.

Art adapts. The world adapts. And if senators' campaign contributions came from the artists instead of the distributors, we wouldn't have laws like the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the proposed Inducing Infringement Act.

Again, I don't advocate theft (and I especially discourage wasting your money on bootleg DVDs). But I do advocate thinking about these issues before making conclusions about them.