Ideas are more valuable than physical gold.
i believe ideas are completely worthless unless they are executed. you could patent an idea for an industrial product or copyright a method but until it is actually put to use or built, it has no actual worth. perhaps one could say they are priceless not in a sense of infinite value but in a sense that they can't have any determined value.
true piracy, i think we can all agree, should be illegal. that is taking an artists work, making a copy of it, then selling it for financial gain. when a consumer buys a pirated copy of an artists work you have proof they are willing to spend money on that artistic work but the money goes to some crafty cheat who contributes nothing to the world: the middleman, pushing money around. the same is not true for online copyright infringement. online "piracy" or copyright infringement can't be theft. the amount of material some people acquire is worth more than they can even afford. you can't consider it a lost sale because the consumer could not have bought it to begin with. since there is no way of determining what i would have or would not have bought had the internet not existed, no one can really say i got this for free rather than paying. it is enough for me to say "i just would not have purchased this if i couldn't get it for free". i could download 10,000$ medical software right now for free at no penalty to the developers and no cost to me. to say i stole something is crazy. i just could not and would not have bought it otherwise. only good comes out of this because i now have a copy of it and no time was wasted. it's not theft, it's a miracle.
i find considering it theft protects interests of those who want to create a fabricated market for stuff that can now be free. if in theory we could download matter, the government would create a new bureau protecting architects, assembly line workers and craftspeople from losing their jobs because what they do could now could be done for free. if through history there was no charge for acquiring media content, we'd still have an abundant supply of art created by people with a passion. many of them would have unrelated jobs but the most successful ones could adapt their skills into something that can't be downloaded.
online copyright infringement is at full force right now. there are few effective limitations and restrictions preventing people from copying files that are not meant to be copied. i, as an artist, designer and aspiring software developer do not care for a world where money is the incentive to be creative. if all we had was art and software created by people who are passionate about what they do, we would rid the world of advertisements, shitty music and junk.
