One more marginally interesting point: The analogies to home building confuse me. My house was built by some company in about 1960. Someone bought it then, borrowing money from the bank to pay the builder for his costs, including land, materials, labor, and the creative design of the building. I bought it from them, paying off a similar mortage. In no way does the original builder have any claim to a payment from me! If I buy an original work of art from one of the local artists I bump into from time to time, I write a check, take it home, put it on the wall and enjoy. That’s it - the artist had better not come by and, showing me a picture of his starving kids, ask for some sort of royalty.

—Are you suggesting there should only be one copy of a book at any time? One production of a play?

Is it my turn for Harry Potter 7 yet? No? I’m still 34,578,902 on the list? Sigh.

Has it occurred to you that if we stop paying creative people from making the effort to take what is in their heads and make it available to everyone, they might just stop doing it?

That’s all. Back to work. JF