For example, if you don't respect copyright law, you wouldn't be able to argue that a corporation taking GPLed code and incorporating it into a proprietary product is immoral nor taking BSD licensed code and removing a link back to the original author is immoral.No, I just can't argue that on the grounds that people should have a right to prevent others from copying their work. I can still defend it without incoherence on other grounds. Just because in some jurisdictions you have to use copyright to defend those rights, that doesn't make those rights dependent on accepting copyright.
For example, here in civil law countries, there's commonly no "copyright" as such; there's Moral Rights (which protect stuff like attribution) and Economic Rights. Therefore, there's no implication that abolishing Economic Rights like restricting others from copying must also abolish attribution rights.
Essentially, the attribution right is the goal, and copyright is just a method that can be used to achieve that goal. There's no incoherence in defending the goal without supporting this method of achieving it.
And that applies to the GPL as well - I can defend the right to prevent others from using your code in closed binaries, without having to defend the wider right of prevent any copying at all. (Though in my particular case, I wouldn't mind losing copyleft if copyright was to be abolished)
No, I just can't argue that on the grounds that people should have a right to prevent others from copying their work. I can still defend it without incoherence on other grounds. Just because in some jurisdictions you have to use copyright to defend those rights, that doesn't make those rights dependent on accepting copyright.
For example, here in civil law countries, there's commonly no "copyright" as such; there's Moral Rights (which protect stuff like attribution) and Economic Rights. Therefore, there's no implication that abolishing Economic Rights like restricting others from copying must also abolish attribution rights.
Essentially, the attribution right is the goal, and copyright is just a method that can be used to achieve that goal. There's no incoherence in defending the goal without supporting this method of achieving it.
And that applies to the GPL as well - I can defend the right to prevent others from using your code in closed binaries, without having to defend the wider right of prevent any copying at all. (Though in my particular case, I wouldn't mind losing copyleft if copyright was to be abolished)