With the new "take from the rich, and give to the poor" method of the Obama Administration, shouldn't we be copying everything we can, and redistributing it, as well?
But you don’t get it: The Obama administration’s method isn’t take from the rich and give to the poor. It’s take from the productive and give to the unproductive. Defending those whose only contribution to the arts and sciences is making copies of what others have created and then charging people for the right to use it fits perfectly well with the Obama program.
Scientists make new discoveries, write them up, then commercial publishers charge their universities for copies of the paper and will sue if one of their colleagues prints a dozen to hand out to his class. Henry Holt & Co. stops Robert Frost’s 1928 poem “Fire and Ice” from being used as song lyrics in the U.S., even though Frost died in 1968. And record companies who will sue file sharers at the drop of a hat have to be sued by the artists who actually produce their content to get them to pay the royalties the actual artists are due.
Ayn Rand’s ideas are generally almost as toxic and anti-human as those of the left, but she correctly predicted the real dichotomy that collectivism tries to “fix” by force: between producers and non-producers, not between rich and poor.