Haha. Well in that case no I strongly do not support what you so generously call "our side". But thanks for throwing my hat into your ring.
I support environments that enable and encourage the production of new creative works. I believe that copyright in some form is necessary to support such a system.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection." - Posner, 1989, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law
While that is certainly a nice and well regarded model, it does not say much about what actually happens. It really only amounts to a proposition, and cannot be read as indicating a necessity. As Landes and Posner themselves later say:
"Economic analysis has come up short of providing either theoretical or empirical grounds for assessing the overall effect of intellectual property law on economic welfare."
-- 'The economic structure of intellectual property law'; Landes, Posner; 2003.
Conclusion, p422, s3.
That is, to spell it out, we do not know if intellectual monopoly law is doing any good at all. This is easy to see for oneself: there must be, and obviously are, costs -- legal, enforcement, search engine 'fixing' -- yet we have no idea how much the gain is. If there is a negative, but the positive is unknown, it is quite possible the sum is itself negative.
> I support environments that enable and encourage the production of new creative works
And when something comes along that makes it so easy to share/steal those creative works? What do you do to it?
It easy to say "I support free speech and the internet", "I don't support government surveillance of it's citizens" and "environments that enable and encourage the production of new creative works" because saying those things is meaningless.
Where do you stand when those things come in conflict with each other and tradeoffs need to be made?
I support environments that enable and encourage the production of new creative works. I believe that copyright in some form is necessary to support such a system.
"A distinguishing characteristic of intellectual property is its "public good" aspect. While the cost of creating a work subject to copyright protection—for example, a book, movie, song, ballet, lithograph, map, business directory, or computer software program—is often high, the cost of reproducing the work, whether by the creator or by those to whom he has made it available, is often low. And once copies are available to others, it is often inexpensive for these users to make additional copies. If the copies made by the creator of the work are priced at or close to marginal cost, others may be discouraged from making copies, but the creator’s total revenues may not be sufficient to cover the cost of creating the work. Copyright protection—the right of the copyright’s owner to prevent others from making copies—trades off the costs of limiting access to a work against the benefits of providing incentives to create the work in the first place. Striking the correct balance between access and incentives is the central problem in copyright law. For copyright law to promote economic efficiency, its principal legal doctrines must, at least approximately, maximize the benefits from creating additional works minus both the losses from limiting access and the costs of administering copyright protection." - Posner, 1989, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law