The USSR eradicated everyone with a deviating opinion about the regime. They perished in the dungeons of the KGB and in the Gulags. What remained were opportunists and followers. Opinions!

1. We might not be the only hosts or place where it can survive. Measles seems to have mutated from a cattle virus.

2. Killing the host might be the virus' end-game, in which case it evolved to extinction. Mutations nor evolution don't have a goal. There's not always an advantage. I bet most changes aren't advantageous.

3. If you really want to see everything in terms of evolutionary change, the virus could even been seen as a tool in human evolution.

Evolution is a way to look at changes in and forces operating on living things. It is a property that emerges for human observers. Nature doesn't care about it.

So you object to its current implementation, not to the principle itself, which is what I was replying to. I agree it's absurd, especially when the rights can be transferred to corporations, which cannot even create.

> No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or author; society needs people doing other things too.

Isn't that up to the individual to decide?

Excellent. It already works. You don't have to abolish copyright.

It is not. Abolishing copyright completely, as the parent seems to desire, implies free access to songs, books, movies.

> a false premise that the author of the content has an innate right to its viewership

If you pose it this way: can't creators decide who gets access to their creations? Is it not inherently theirs? What's the difference with e.g. a piece of bread?

> there is no damage ...

So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going to buy anyway?

The reason is damaging someone's livelihood in the cases I mentioned. Or large scale economic damage in case you're copying money.

As in: you don't care about your privacy?