IMO, IP is a loaded term that distorts the wide range of issues. IM for Intellectual Monopoly is much closer to the truth. To be clear I have no problem with the idea of copyright or a well run power company being run as a local monopoly, but there outside of the normal business. And the goals should be finding rules that best serve society not the owners of said monopoly.

In what world does personal expected value versus expected cost of breaking the law ever become a good way to make moral decisions?

There are at least two counterarguments to this.

1) The law is written for precisely this reason. Most people do live by a cost vs benefit mindset, and the penalties of laws are generally tuned until people stop committing the crime. I wouldn't want to live in a world where the penalty for murder was only a week in prison.

2) Anyone who uses the law as a way to guide their own moral compass probably isn't very moral, because throughout history every society has had laws which are later agreed to be evil.

In this one, where my taxes paid for the goddamned research.

If the public is paying for the research should they not have access to the published papers resulting from it without paying $32 to a private company for a PDF download?

That's not this work, but arguably the original motives and intent of the law is subverted if what's happening here is the government outsourcing the creation of the work to a third party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...

I see no parallels to firearm possession.