Old argument is getting OLD ....
Your argument, below, is full of holes.
For starters, the people actually MAKING the information the end-users wish to purchase aren't the same people putting all the usage restrictions in place. Unfortunately, the legal system upholds the right of the content distributors to apply all these limitations on your usage, even if the content creators themselves don't want those in place at all.
So basically, I don't have the option of actually buying the information from its source. If I want the content at all, my options are either to agree to some self-serving and overly restrictive usage license as I pay a distributor, OR simply "pirate" a copy of it, costing me nothing but my time and a little bandwidth, and agreeing to nothing.
Your "golf course" analogy fails, because golf courses and their usage restrictions are put in place by the owners of the courses themselves. They own the property you want to use, and the law always says you are illegally trespassing if you're on their property without their express permission.
To compare it to the digital content situation we're all dealing with today, it would be more like a golf course owned by "Joe Golfman", who put the course together hoping as many golfers would use and enjoy it as possible. But unfortunately, his course was very difficult to find and most people trying to find it on their own by driving around simply got lost and gave up. So Joe decided he needed to market his course, but didn't have much money left to do it after spending it all building the awesome course. Along came a company promising they could promote Joe Golfman's course to practically everyone who enjoyed golf, and make sure they found it. Only catch? Joe had to sign over his property rights to them and agree to let them run everything. Next thing you know, they advertised Golfman's course to thousands of excited customers-to-be, but to their dismay, they found a huge number of rules were being enforced that made using the course impractical or impossible in some cases. No golfing for more than 15 minutes per session. No using your own clubs; must rent the course issued clubs only. No golfing on holes 5, 7, or 10 after 11AM weekdays.
Joe was outraged but what could he do? He signed the deal to turn it over to them....
You're not buying an object like a television or a hammer, you're buying information, which the people who created it are selling you the rights to use under certain circumstances.
You are purchasing the rights to some intellectual property, to be consumed or used only within certain pre-approved contexts. You clicked "I agree" or flipped past the copy-rights page in your book, laid down the money, and accepted those terms.
If you don't like the circumstances under which you are being sold the information (book, music, movie, etc.) then don't purchase it. You only have the rights to that information that you were assigned and no sense of entitlement trumps that. That's not to say that you can't desire to do more or petition the company or person who sold it to you for the rights to do more with your purchase, but you are breaking a contract that you agreed to whenever you take matters into your own hands without approval.
In short: You agreed to a license to use certain property, not the actual property itself. You can play golf on the golf course during pre-approved times, not do whatever you want on or with the course at your whim, you need approval first.
