If you're like I was a decade ago, or like most people are when they first start thinking about these issues, then just about now you should be puzzled about something you hadn't thought through before.
We live in a world that celebrates "property". I am one of those celebrants. I believe in the value of property in general, and I also believe in the value of that weird form of property that lawyers call "intellectual property" A large, diverse society cannot survive without property, a large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without intellectual propertyy.
But it takes a second's reflection to realize that there is plenty of value out there that "property" doesn't capture. I didn't mean "money can't buy you love" but rather, value that is plainly part of a process of production, including commercial as well as noncommercial production. If Disney animators had stolen a set of pencils to draw Steamboat Willie, we'd have no hesitation in condemning that taking as wrong even though trivial, even if unnoticed. Yet there was nothing wrong, at least under the law of the day, with Disney's taking from Buster Keaton or from The Brother's Grimm. There was nothing wrong with the taking from Keaton because Disney's use would have been considered "fair". There was nothing wrong with the taking from the Grimms because the Grimms' work was in the public domain.
Thus even though the things that Disney took or more generally, the things taken by anyone exercising Walt Disney creativity are valuable, our tradition does not treat those takings as wrong. Some things remain free for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good.
