There is a major difference between free software, which obeys and even relies on copyright to enforce its rules, and this generalized pirate movement which wants the right to copy anything, anytime, freely.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-war-on-sharing-why-the-fsf-cares...
The high level would be original free software and media - tools and inspiration.
The medium level is derivatives; things made using the tools and media built upon other media.
The low level is the consumer level, where the best things are filtered and distributed to the public.
The system takes the lowest-cost option at each step: remixing material and building on open source is easier than starting from scratch. Digital distribution is easier than physical distribution.
But it is entirely dependent upon the source material being permissive-use. When it isn't, derivatives become illegal material, and people will subsequently choose not to make value-added derivatives because any profit motive that would have existed is gone; settlement and legal fees are likely to wipe out any gains.
This doesn't affect the consumers of media, however, because consumers are largely anonymous and hard to target by the legal system. Thus you get widespread piracy, but few derivatives.
The fight for the Public Commons is a struggle that has been going on for a long time and it just so happens that the internet is another battlefield in which it takes place. Especially since the end of World War 2, and the growth of contemporary corporatism, there is a struggle between privatization (where a few people profit off of resources that should belong to everyone) and the Public Commons (where resources are used for the benefit of the public, i.e. everyone).
This struggle becomes more and more acute every day. People are giving their lives in defense of the Public Commons. In Bolivia, people took to the streets to fight Bechtel's attempt to steal water resources from the Commons and claim ownership of it for themselves so that a few individuals could benefit by selling Bolivians the water that belongs to them in the first place. Many Bolivians gave their life in this struggle because it required defending themselves against Bechtel's private death squads. But, in the end, the Commons won -- but at a great sacrifice. And there are hundreds of examples of this type of conflict happening all over the world, every single day. And, this is why what The Pirate Bay is doing is justified. Because it subverts and sabotages the efforts of the RIAA cartel while promoting the ideals of sharing and co-operation in the world.
I cheer every time Final Cut Studio is downloaded for free via BitTorrent. Microsoft and Adobe and Apple and all of these corrupt corporations use bribery and extortion to do what they can to destroy the Public Information Commons. Shell and Exxon and Bechtel use private death squads to murder labor activists and indigenous communities to fight other forms of the Public Commons.
A former CIA agent tells the story about how he & other operatives in Castro's Cuba would pour cement into milk headed for children in public schools. The "contra" terrorists who fought the Public Commons in Nicaragua raped and killed a group of Catholic nuns and when Archbishop Oscar Romero spoke out about it in a sermon, these butchers gunned him down during the mass.
This is the level of reality that defenders of the Commons face. Peer-to-peer networks make it possible for one of these international criminal cartels to fear their utter annihilation, to be replaced by the Public Commons.
How any decent human being could "strongly disagree with the premise of this" is beyond me. This is why I support The Pirate Bay and any other project which would sabotage a future of corporate privatization.