I was once a true believer in all this "free everything!" stuff too, but once I saw what it was really all about -- the sacrifice of the artist to the passive consumer and the content aggregators -- I couldn't un-see it. Now I'm an atheist at a tent revival. I've lost the faith.
That's never popular, but I really think I'm right about this and I think with time other people are going to see it too.
I'm not intending to insult artists, but I am insulting the Internet's popular trash culture of memes and throwaway junk. I see "free" as being partly responsible for that. There's no money in creating online culture, therefore nobody can spend any real time or effort on it. As a result you get a lot of totally disposable superficial noise and ad-driven marketing gimmickry.
I am supporting your right to have control over your work -- not only a right to earn something from it or to give it away if you so choose, but also to have some say over how it's used.
If "information is free," what right would these guys have to protest their music being used in torture chambers? None, of course.
That's an extreme example but it illustrates my point. Copyrights aren't just about money. They're also about creators having some kind of say about what can be done with their work.
I believe that the creators of things should have more rights over their creations -- yes more -- than those that just "consume" them. Anything else strikes me as a grotesque value inversion. Disempowering the creator in favor of the consumer de-funds culture creation, impoverishes creators, and encourages a society of utterly passive consumption and triviality.
It's the ultimate in passive consumerism. Value flows one way -- downhill -- until the snow's all melted and the streams run dry.
That's not what free culture was supposed to do, either. Free culture was supposed to lead to a gift culture, not a culture of take-take-take. Part of why I've lost the faith is that the promised land hasn't come. Taking is all I see... take, take, take, gimme, gimme, gimme...
We create for many different reasons. Don't reduce us to just wage-slaves.