> The GPL protections don’t exist without copyright law.

The GPL is a hack leveraging copyright law against itself, speciically, it seeks to achieve two things:

(1) The legal freedom that would exist in the absence of copyright law, and

(2) Source disclosure of modifications, on terms that preserve point (1).

Without copyright law, (1) is unnecessary, but people with concerns like those that motivate the FSF would probably look for a different mechanism to encourage source disclosure.

> Why are you so willing to dismiss other creators right to control how their content gets created and think the people who choose to create content and license their software under the GPL should be respected.

First, how is pointing out the fact that copyright infringement is neither, in the literal sense, either piracy or theft, and that those are metaphors used for their emotional impact, dismissing anyone’s right to do anything?

Second, while I respect the FSF’s basic goals with copyleft licensing, I’d much prefer copyrights with a shorter default term (perhaps extendable with a fee, but even then I’d prefer the terms of the extension beyond a short default term made it possible to buy the work into the public domain at a set price that was also the basis for the fee for maintaining the copyright), narrower subject matter coverage, and broader fair use limits, even though that would limit the utility of the GPL as a wedge to encourage source disclosure on Free terms. I don’t think people using the GPL deserve any better treatment under copyright law than people releasing content that isn't under a Free license, I think the current structure of copyright law is an excessive restriction on human liberty that does not serve the public good.