[WS:] Granted, intellectual property rights do some good (like protecting interests of authors like yourself) but they also do a lot of bad, like creating monopoly rights for something that would normally be a public good. For example, big pharma companies patent ingredients used in traditional medicine in Africa, which amounts to neo-colonial exploitation by the means of law. Or record labels using it to steal music from musicians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihari_brothers).
So the proper question to ask is whether intellectual property rights create more good than bad for society. I am not sure what the answer is, but I have an impression that bads outweigh goods, so the point is to change that balance instead of defending the status quo or overthrowing it altogether.
One area where the system of intellectual property rights seems to go absolutely crazy is the protection of ideas instead of specific products e.g. genetically modified seeds. For example, if the plant that a farmer grew out of genetically modified seed produced a seed, the idea of genetic modification reproduced in that second seed is patent protected, but it should not be (I know, Monstanto and Jordan would disagree :) ) If patents could be used that way, some really big bads - like destruction of traditional medicine by big pharma, could be avoided, even though some software writers may be hurt. But if I were to weigh traditional medicine against an electronic gizmo that will become obsolete the next day it was released, I would go for the former.
Wojtek