That's the wrong question. The right question is: "Is there any reason why I shouldn't do this?". If actions are immoral by default, and you need to prove entitlement, then why do you feel entitled to pour milk on your cereal in the morning?
I don't think you fully understood my point, particularly entitlement and its role in my system of morals. As I carefully explained in my "conclusion of 1)" paragraph, a lack of entitlement does not necessarily imply that the action is immoral, rather it's morally neutral: fine to do unless it hurts someone. Hence the meat of my argument: no entitlement + harm to others = morally wrong.
In the case of cereal and milk, remember that I own both the cereal and the milk, and I am entitled to use them however way I want, so long as, naturally, it doesn't harm others (e.g. both the cereal and milk over the heads of people walking in the street). Pouring the milk over the cereal harms no one in general, and so I am entitled to do it if I so choose.
By this definition of harm, you are harming the producers too, by not buying a copy of the game. Or their other games. Or other producers' games.
I agree. However, in this case, you have more entitlement to do whatever you wish with your money than the producers have to your money. That is, until you decide to use their works, in which case they have entitlement to what they charge you. In that case, similar harm occurs, but this time there is no entitlement.
Now, here we come to the source of your argument, which relies on an unspoken assumption: that the current incarnation of copyright law is the morally correct one. And the only basis for that is, as the GP says, "because the government said so".
This is really not the basis for my argument. It does not remotely rely on this assumption. It is not a reformation of "because the government said so". Pretending otherwise does not demolish my argument.
The basis of my argument, FYI, is my entitlement-harm system of morals. There are many varied ways to obtain entitlement, and many varied ways to generate harm. For example, our society has promised producers a limited monopoly over copying their work. A promise like this means we have no entitlement to copy. The fact that they used this assumption to carve themselves a livelihood. By breaking this promise, we can damage or even destroy their livelihood, so the harm here is perfectly evident. Again, no entitlement + harm = wrong.
Notice that there is no mention of where this promise comes from. There's no justification of whether copyright should be here or not, and there's no accounting for the opinion of the government du jour. Once the promise is made, we either keep our end, or we deliver fair warning that we want to change the terms, so that no producer that has created works for copyright is robbed of his entitlement to do so.
Hint: because the government said so isn't a real answer
OK then. The reason is a combination of two points:
1) You have no clear entitlement to another copy of CDs. This is important to mention, because some people believe they do. They believe that if they bought something, this gives them a right (morally, if not legally) to use it in perpetuity, transcending any physical representation of the object. What is less clear is exactly why this is. It doesn't appear to be derived from any analogy in traditional physical property, as there is no such right in physical property. If you lose your physical property, you have no right to another instance of that property. You cannot demand it from the manufacturer, the retailer, or the government. It therefore must be a right unique to non-physical property.
So then, the question still remains, from where does this entitlement come? Is it just an arbitrary rule? Perhaps it's derived from the fact that copying is possible. However, the possibility of an action certainly does not imply that you have the right to that action (since there are plenty of immoral actions that are possible).
Perhaps it's not so much the possibility of obtaining another copy as it is that you could have taken better care of the disks, or backed them up, while completely avoided the business of piracy. That certainly seems like one of the most plausible of the possibilities, however this doesn't seem to be completely justified. We couldn't, for example, apply the same logic to the lottery without defeating its purpose. Every time someone plays the lottery, the numbers are essentially arbitrary, and had they taken the winning numbers, they would be a lot better off. Does this mean that they are entitled to a share of the winnings, even if they lost? No. The system relies on people failing in order for it to succeed. There needs to be some kind of evidence here that people are entitled to reap the rewards of potential actions they could have taken, that they failed to actually take.
So, to conclude part 1), I hope you at least see why taking an extra copy is at most morally neutral. There's nothing wrong with taking something you'rey not entitled to, so long as it doesn't hurt other people. If you find a broken computer in a ditch, you are perfectly welcome to take it, even though you had no specific right to it, simply because taking it does not harm anyone else. However, if you take a computer out of someone's place, you still have no right to it, but you are also harming the owner, so the theft is actually morally wrong.
2) You are harming the producers. The copy you co-opted for yourself reduces your demand for the game, drastically reducing the possibility that you'd buy it (again). All the usual piracy arguments apply here: they need the revenue to keep creating games and we have a moral obligation to fulfil our promises to them as outlined in copyright law. Now, I realise you've already paid for the game, but you paid for that single copy of the game, which is no longer available to you, and you have no entitlement to another. This puts you an even standing with anyone who has never owned the game. If you want another copy, the law says you must buy it. Since you are not entitled to it, and taking it would harm others, it is morally wrong to take it.
Oh wait, was that question supposed to be rhetorical?
They are more a tool for socialization than education, readying a workforce for a life of 9 to 5 conformity.
There is a difference between readying a child for the menial job they're probably going to get, and socialisation, which suggest pushing a child to a menial job, If the schools systematically promised children amazing careers where they would get paid for doing what they loved, and failed to prepare them for what they were likely to get, then I'd say the school system would have a critical hole in it that needed to plugged as soon as possible.
I guess it's in their interest to suck up to MPAA, RIAA and book publishers?
That, or your completely unsubstantiated premises are wrong. And personally I can't see why a declining company, with a reputation as bad as MS, would entertain the notion of further alienating users by further locking down their platform against the users' interests, so that really just leaves the false premise possibility.
This reminds me of when my parents were wondering whether or not to make the leap from crappy pay-by-the-hour dialup to 256kbps adsl. Their argument was that we never used the internet that much, which was absolutely true. Needless to say, we soon after obtained said adsl and never once looked back.
Actually they're both really good. They both do more or less exactly what I need of them, with the necessary speed, and they both look good doing it too. They're both the product of many people's hard work, and it shows.
I'm thoroughly bored of this thread now, but I can't resist debating with one of my freaks.
You don't need to invent intangible forms of "property" to explain the operation of a bank. Ordinary tangible property is sufficient to the task.
Yes and no. You seem very biased against calling it property for "it can be explained in other terms" to imply that "it should be explained in other terms". Besides which, isn't all property just a series of legal obligations and agreements? Property could be described perfectly without making reference to the term property. It is through these that property is legally defined. If you think the term property should exist at all, I submit that you also need a better reason for concluding that a bank balance is not property.
The reason why bank balances (or more precisely, the duty that the bank has to honour its debts to you) is property is because it is valuable, it is legally tied to you to do with as you please. You may buy it, sell it, or trade it for its afore-mentioned value. What other attributes does it require in order to qualify as property?
Perhaps a better counterexample would be private information. Again, private information is valuable, legally tied to you, and able to be bought, sold, or traded. If it is not our property, then an explanation is required as why we should get any control over how it is distributed at all. Why should we get to control this information, and not other pieces of information? The reason is because, well, it's ours. You can try to carefully explain it, dodging any words that suggest ownership, but in the end, our private information is for us to use as we please, and for others to use only as we permit.
Hey thanks! It's always nice to hear a little bit of positive feedback. The last time I argued with someone on/., he told me that I needed to go back to the first grade and read up on Aristotle.:-)
You, of course, realise that this makes any quibbles over what constitutes property utterly moot, right?
No, because property is a legal concept
Touche, but I was more thinking of quibbling over what we think should constitute property. If you want to cite legal definition, that's at least something we can independently verify. However, by taking this stance, you are also shooting yourself in the foot. You can't argue that intellectual property is not property, taking property by its legal definition, when the law defines intellectual property. Everything you said that property must entail is broken by intellectual property. To argue that it's not property, you have to ignore that it is property in the eyes of the law.
Well, OK, I'm willing to make a concession here: I allow the data to be modified, as long as it is not decreased. I allow any amount of increase, though. I'm not at all possessive at the exact value, I just don't want a lower one.
That sounds consistent with larger numbers having larger values, but not so consistent with it being worthless either way. You're not being very convincing here.
Because I have a contract with the bank giving me that control.
OK, let's start being clear here. What I'm claiming you own is not the number itself (it's a number that probably occurs in many places), nor the physical bits that it's stored upon (they're owned by the bank), but you own being the subject of the bank's duty to pay a person money when you decide to lower that number. You claim that this is not ownership, merely some mechanics tied to a contract.
First of all, this duty is not worthless. The proof of this is to simply ask anybody on the planet to relinquish this duty to you, and ask them what they'll pay for it. For the vast majority of people, they won't accept any amount less than what is stored in there. This tells us that, to them, the duty of the banks to pay them money in exchange for lowering their balance is worth to them at least what the balance reads. This is literally the definition of subjective monetary value: how much a given person will trade for the object in question. So, we have at least proven that, while completely intangible, this duty is not worthless.
If you decide to define property in a way that excludes this duty, you may. Do not expect the courts, or anyone else, to agree with you on that point. You must remember that property, even of tangible objects, is an abstract, artificial concept that is enforced only by law. It is up to us to decide what to treat as property, and what not to treat as property, as well as what to call property and what not to call property. In this case, we have this duty, which has worth like property, is forbidden to be taken or otherwise abused like property, that can be bought, sold, and otherwise transferred like property. To me, to many others, and to the courts, this is sufficient to consider it property, as it shares all the core properties that make up the concept of property. Like I said, you're free to make exceptions, or impose further arbitrary restrictions to your personal concept of property, but if you want others to share your view, you need to be more convincing.
You are missing that whether something is worth anything real and whether it should be protected by law are two very different questions. For example, legally owning slaves is worth a lot, but I think we both agree that it should not only not be protected by law, but even forbidden.
I wasn't claiming that copyrights should be protected. I was pointing out that so many on/. have decided that a potential to gain money should not be protected by law, specifically because they consider it not to be "real". I think that distinction is probably better placed at the feet of the people whose view I was attacking.
Whether something should be protected, merely allowed or forbidden by law should not depend on whether you can potentially gain money from it. It should be dependent on whether allowing or forbidding it gives a net gain or net loss. For slavery, forbidding clearly gives a net gain. For bank accounts, protecting clearly gives a net gain.
I'm with you so far. You, of course, realise that this makes any quibbles over what constitutes property utterly moot, right?
For copyright and patents, the current system clearly gives a net loss. Completely removing copyright would probably not be a good idea, but limiting it to a much shorter duration (say, ten years from publication) I think would give a net gain.
Well, I don't think it's nearly so clear that it's a net loss, in that we would be better with no copyright than with copyright as it is now, but yeah I agree shorter terms would be appropriate.
Sorry to double post, but I wanted to add something extra (not that it contradicts your viewpoint in any way). All property is artificial. It's an abstraction of possession that's protected by law. Let's say that I have a banana, and you take the banana from me, with no previous arrangement made between us. I now no longer possess the banana, but you do. What is there in the natural world to say that I "own" the banana and not you? Clearly possession is not enough.
Our laws define ownership. Without them, natural law would basically be along the lines of "It's yours until someone stronger takes it". People tend to place far too much importance on possession, not realising that what really underpins property is a complicated series of laws, without which property would hold no weight. It is but another reason why picking on intellectual property purely because it refers to something intangible is not really a valid concern (not that you do that, of course).
However I demand that the number on my bank account is not modified in the process.
Can you give me an explanation as to why you would make that demand (you could be jeopardising your free car)? For a worthless piece of data, you seem awfully possessive of it.
The data on the bank is not the money. The data on the bank only tells me how much money I own.
That's fair enough. Could you tell me why you should get any control whatsoever of this piece of data which is stored on the bank's private property? Why should they not be allowed to change the number at their whim? I mean, if they decided to set the number to 0, it's not like you've lost anything. You had no money before, and you have no money now. The only thing that's changed is the potential to gain money. But as we all know from multiple discussions about the **AA and copyrights, potential to gain money is not worth anything real, and should not be protected by law. Or am I missing something here?
Clearly you accept that valuable items need not be tangible. And, from what I can tell, you accept that some intangible items should be subjected to property laws. You've now gone to the next logical step which is to argue that ideas specifically should not be treated as property. The theme of this argument is that ideas are more valuable with less restrictions on them, which is undeniably true. An idea benefits only those who can access its implementation, and the more freedom they have to use and play with the idea, the more likely they are to develop some of their own.
None of the above is in any serious dispute. The problem arises from cultivating ideas in the first place. Plenty of people can have some kind of a brainwave along the lines of "Wouldn't it be cool if...", or perhaps mentally work out some of the details. However, it is a lot less common to find someone with the knowhow, the means, and the opportunity to make an idea come into fruition. This, of course, depends heavily on what the idea entails, but always the implementation is harder to foster than the idea.
None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. -- Thomas Edison
The 1% is cheap, and the rest is where almost all the value lies. This is the part that we support with intellectual property laws. As valuable as an idea without restrictions may be, the often overlooked genesis of the idea must be protected or encouraged somehow, because otherwise it makes no economic sense to expect people to put themselves through it. If we can find a way to protect the 99% of invention, while making ideas more free, I would support it 100%. Otherwise, I will stick with the best system we have until a demonstrably better one comes along.
By the by, not only corporations make money off ideas. Counterexample? Minecraft.
Yes indeed, the kind that has never once inflated away to worthlessness.
But, if you disagree, I'd be happy to trade my 12 year old car for, oh let's say, 100,000 of those worthless, electronically-stored dollars? Think about it; you give me some worthless, replicable data, and I give you something that will give you at least a year's worth of transport. It's a positive bargain!
Money stored electronically at the bank is one of the classic counterexamples to the belief that all property is (or should be) tangible. The GP is taking a dig at people who subscribe to this view.
That's something I've never understood. How does crappy content encourage more people to download it? If I think something is worthwhile, then I watch it. If I don't, then I won't. Why would you continue to seek out and download shows (or music, movies, games, or any other form of entertainment) you think are crap?
lets always remember that if they can afford so much on advertising and marketing, SOMETHING IS WRONG and should be changed.
Wait what? What exactly do you think advertising and marketing is for? It's not a luxury that corporations collect and attempt to outspend each other in. Corporations don't have luxuries (except when board members decide to give themselves pay rises or golden parachutes). If they spend money on something, they intend to make a profit. Regardless of how much money they spend on advertising, it is so that more people can buy it, which lowers prices. Let me repeat: this is regardless of how much money they are spending. If they were forced to spend less on advertising, through legal or consumer pressure, this would likely mean a suboptimal market awareness of the drug, corresponding to a drop in purchases, and a higher price to recoup R&D. The bottom line is, less people who need the drug actually obtain it.
I wholeheartedly agree that healthcare is especially important, probably moreso than any other consumer R&D. That's why it's especially important not to grind your anti-marketing axe here.
A judge ruling in favor of a company seeking to protect their trademarks is not government censorship.
Of course it's censorship. If someone wants to tell people that their goods are genuine Chanel, and a Judge, in their capacity as a public servant, prevents them from doing so, it is censorship. Of course, we don't call it censorship, because the word "censorship" has some nasty fucking connotations, along the lines of 1984-esque dystopias, and something beneficial like censoring for the sake of trademarks really feels more like "protection", doesn't it?
What else is censorship without people typically calling it as such? We have libel/slander, threats, classified information, copyright (although its antiponents have taken to calling it that to invoke the afore-mentioned 1984-esque dystopian image), fraud, etc. Censorship is all around us. And for certain types of censorship, that's the way it should be.
Understanding doesn't have to be non-judgemental. Actually, let me clarify that: understanding doesn't have to remain non-judgemental. First comes understanding, then comes the judgement. When you mix up the order, that's what's commonly known as a knee-jerk.
Yes, your hypothetical argument is right. Censorship is a cultural phenomenon in the US, as is the opposition to censorship. Once you understand both, then you can begin promoting one over the other.
At the risk of being down-modded into oblivion I have to ask: Why? What possible reason is there that censorship, once started, inevitably never stops? Let's say, hypothetically, a government decides to ban the use of the word "exquisitely". Please explain to me the harm enough to warrant automatic vehement opposition, and demonstrate to me why this well-defined piece of censorship will necessarily spread.
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I don't think you fully understood my point, particularly entitlement and its role in my system of morals. As I carefully explained in my "conclusion of 1)" paragraph, a lack of entitlement does not necessarily imply that the action is immoral, rather it's morally neutral: fine to do unless it hurts someone. Hence the meat of my argument: no entitlement + harm to others = morally wrong.
In the case of cereal and milk, remember that I own both the cereal and the milk, and I am entitled to use them however way I want, so long as, naturally, it doesn't harm others (e.g. both the cereal and milk over the heads of people walking in the street). Pouring the milk over the cereal harms no one in general, and so I am entitled to do it if I so choose.
I agree. However, in this case, you have more entitlement to do whatever you wish with your money than the producers have to your money. That is, until you decide to use their works, in which case they have entitlement to what they charge you. In that case, similar harm occurs, but this time there is no entitlement.
This is really not the basis for my argument. It does not remotely rely on this assumption. It is not a reformation of "because the government said so". Pretending otherwise does not demolish my argument.
The basis of my argument, FYI, is my entitlement-harm system of morals. There are many varied ways to obtain entitlement, and many varied ways to generate harm. For example, our society has promised producers a limited monopoly over copying their work. A promise like this means we have no entitlement to copy. The fact that they used this assumption to carve themselves a livelihood. By breaking this promise, we can damage or even destroy their livelihood, so the harm here is perfectly evident. Again, no entitlement + harm = wrong.
Notice that there is no mention of where this promise comes from. There's no justification of whether copyright should be here or not, and there's no accounting for the opinion of the government du jour. Once the promise is made, we either keep our end, or we deliver fair warning that we want to change the terms, so that no producer that has created works for copyright is robbed of his entitlement to do so.
OK then. The reason is a combination of two points:
1) You have no clear entitlement to another copy of CDs. This is important to mention, because some people believe they do. They believe that if they bought something, this gives them a right (morally, if not legally) to use it in perpetuity, transcending any physical representation of the object. What is less clear is exactly why this is. It doesn't appear to be derived from any analogy in traditional physical property, as there is no such right in physical property. If you lose your physical property, you have no right to another instance of that property. You cannot demand it from the manufacturer, the retailer, or the government. It therefore must be a right unique to non-physical property.
So then, the question still remains, from where does this entitlement come? Is it just an arbitrary rule? Perhaps it's derived from the fact that copying is possible. However, the possibility of an action certainly does not imply that you have the right to that action (since there are plenty of immoral actions that are possible).
Perhaps it's not so much the possibility of obtaining another copy as it is that you could have taken better care of the disks, or backed them up, while completely avoided the business of piracy. That certainly seems like one of the most plausible of the possibilities, however this doesn't seem to be completely justified. We couldn't, for example, apply the same logic to the lottery without defeating its purpose. Every time someone plays the lottery, the numbers are essentially arbitrary, and had they taken the winning numbers, they would be a lot better off. Does this mean that they are entitled to a share of the winnings, even if they lost? No. The system relies on people failing in order for it to succeed. There needs to be some kind of evidence here that people are entitled to reap the rewards of potential actions they could have taken, that they failed to actually take.
So, to conclude part 1), I hope you at least see why taking an extra copy is at most morally neutral. There's nothing wrong with taking something you'rey not entitled to, so long as it doesn't hurt other people. If you find a broken computer in a ditch, you are perfectly welcome to take it, even though you had no specific right to it, simply because taking it does not harm anyone else. However, if you take a computer out of someone's place, you still have no right to it, but you are also harming the owner, so the theft is actually morally wrong.
2) You are harming the producers. The copy you co-opted for yourself reduces your demand for the game, drastically reducing the possibility that you'd buy it (again). All the usual piracy arguments apply here: they need the revenue to keep creating games and we have a moral obligation to fulfil our promises to them as outlined in copyright law. Now, I realise you've already paid for the game, but you paid for that single copy of the game, which is no longer available to you, and you have no entitlement to another. This puts you an even standing with anyone who has never owned the game. If you want another copy, the law says you must buy it. Since you are not entitled to it, and taking it would harm others, it is morally wrong to take it.
Oh wait, was that question supposed to be rhetorical?
There is a difference between readying a child for the menial job they're probably going to get, and socialisation, which suggest pushing a child to a menial job, If the schools systematically promised children amazing careers where they would get paid for doing what they loved, and failed to prepare them for what they were likely to get, then I'd say the school system would have a critical hole in it that needed to plugged as soon as possible.
That, or your completely unsubstantiated premises are wrong. And personally I can't see why a declining company, with a reputation as bad as MS, would entertain the notion of further alienating users by further locking down their platform against the users' interests, so that really just leaves the false premise possibility.
This reminds me of when my parents were wondering whether or not to make the leap from crappy pay-by-the-hour dialup to 256kbps adsl. Their argument was that we never used the internet that much, which was absolutely true. Needless to say, we soon after obtained said adsl and never once looked back.
Actually they're both really good. They both do more or less exactly what I need of them, with the necessary speed, and they both look good doing it too. They're both the product of many people's hard work, and it shows.
Wait, what site is this?
Their interest in keeping the project sustainable does not conflict with our interest in having a free ad-blocker nearly as much as you might think.
I'm thoroughly bored of this thread now, but I can't resist debating with one of my freaks.
Yes and no. You seem very biased against calling it property for "it can be explained in other terms" to imply that "it should be explained in other terms". Besides which, isn't all property just a series of legal obligations and agreements? Property could be described perfectly without making reference to the term property. It is through these that property is legally defined. If you think the term property should exist at all, I submit that you also need a better reason for concluding that a bank balance is not property.
The reason why bank balances (or more precisely, the duty that the bank has to honour its debts to you) is property is because it is valuable, it is legally tied to you to do with as you please. You may buy it, sell it, or trade it for its afore-mentioned value. What other attributes does it require in order to qualify as property?
Perhaps a better counterexample would be private information. Again, private information is valuable, legally tied to you, and able to be bought, sold, or traded. If it is not our property, then an explanation is required as why we should get any control over how it is distributed at all. Why should we get to control this information, and not other pieces of information? The reason is because, well, it's ours. You can try to carefully explain it, dodging any words that suggest ownership, but in the end, our private information is for us to use as we please, and for others to use only as we permit.
Hey thanks! It's always nice to hear a little bit of positive feedback. The last time I argued with someone on /., he told me that I needed to go back to the first grade and read up on Aristotle. :-)
Touche, but I was more thinking of quibbling over what we think should constitute property. If you want to cite legal definition, that's at least something we can independently verify. However, by taking this stance, you are also shooting yourself in the foot. You can't argue that intellectual property is not property, taking property by its legal definition, when the law defines intellectual property. Everything you said that property must entail is broken by intellectual property. To argue that it's not property, you have to ignore that it is property in the eyes of the law.
That sounds consistent with larger numbers having larger values, but not so consistent with it being worthless either way. You're not being very convincing here.
OK, let's start being clear here. What I'm claiming you own is not the number itself (it's a number that probably occurs in many places), nor the physical bits that it's stored upon (they're owned by the bank), but you own being the subject of the bank's duty to pay a person money when you decide to lower that number. You claim that this is not ownership, merely some mechanics tied to a contract.
First of all, this duty is not worthless. The proof of this is to simply ask anybody on the planet to relinquish this duty to you, and ask them what they'll pay for it. For the vast majority of people, they won't accept any amount less than what is stored in there. This tells us that, to them, the duty of the banks to pay them money in exchange for lowering their balance is worth to them at least what the balance reads. This is literally the definition of subjective monetary value: how much a given person will trade for the object in question. So, we have at least proven that, while completely intangible, this duty is not worthless.
If you decide to define property in a way that excludes this duty, you may. Do not expect the courts, or anyone else, to agree with you on that point. You must remember that property, even of tangible objects, is an abstract, artificial concept that is enforced only by law. It is up to us to decide what to treat as property, and what not to treat as property, as well as what to call property and what not to call property. In this case, we have this duty, which has worth like property, is forbidden to be taken or otherwise abused like property, that can be bought, sold, and otherwise transferred like property. To me, to many others, and to the courts, this is sufficient to consider it property, as it shares all the core properties that make up the concept of property. Like I said, you're free to make exceptions, or impose further arbitrary restrictions to your personal concept of property, but if you want others to share your view, you need to be more convincing.
I wasn't claiming that copyrights should be protected. I was pointing out that so many on /. have decided that a potential to gain money should not be protected by law, specifically because they consider it not to be "real". I think that distinction is probably better placed at the feet of the people whose view I was attacking.
I'm with you so far. You, of course, realise that this makes any quibbles over what constitutes property utterly moot, right?
Well, I don't think it's nearly so clear that it's a net loss, in that we would be better with no copyright than with copyright as it is now, but yeah I agree shorter terms would be appropriate.
Sorry to double post, but I wanted to add something extra (not that it contradicts your viewpoint in any way). All property is artificial. It's an abstraction of possession that's protected by law. Let's say that I have a banana, and you take the banana from me, with no previous arrangement made between us. I now no longer possess the banana, but you do. What is there in the natural world to say that I "own" the banana and not you? Clearly possession is not enough.
Our laws define ownership. Without them, natural law would basically be along the lines of "It's yours until someone stronger takes it". People tend to place far too much importance on possession, not realising that what really underpins property is a complicated series of laws, without which property would hold no weight. It is but another reason why picking on intellectual property purely because it refers to something intangible is not really a valid concern (not that you do that, of course).
Can you give me an explanation as to why you would make that demand (you could be jeopardising your free car)? For a worthless piece of data, you seem awfully possessive of it.
That's fair enough. Could you tell me why you should get any control whatsoever of this piece of data which is stored on the bank's private property? Why should they not be allowed to change the number at their whim? I mean, if they decided to set the number to 0, it's not like you've lost anything. You had no money before, and you have no money now. The only thing that's changed is the potential to gain money. But as we all know from multiple discussions about the **AA and copyrights, potential to gain money is not worth anything real, and should not be protected by law. Or am I missing something here?
Clearly you accept that valuable items need not be tangible. And, from what I can tell, you accept that some intangible items should be subjected to property laws. You've now gone to the next logical step which is to argue that ideas specifically should not be treated as property. The theme of this argument is that ideas are more valuable with less restrictions on them, which is undeniably true. An idea benefits only those who can access its implementation, and the more freedom they have to use and play with the idea, the more likely they are to develop some of their own.
None of the above is in any serious dispute. The problem arises from cultivating ideas in the first place. Plenty of people can have some kind of a brainwave along the lines of "Wouldn't it be cool if ...", or perhaps mentally work out some of the details. However, it is a lot less common to find someone with the knowhow, the means, and the opportunity to make an idea come into fruition. This, of course, depends heavily on what the idea entails, but always the implementation is harder to foster than the idea.
The 1% is cheap, and the rest is where almost all the value lies. This is the part that we support with intellectual property laws. As valuable as an idea without restrictions may be, the often overlooked genesis of the idea must be protected or encouraged somehow, because otherwise it makes no economic sense to expect people to put themselves through it. If we can find a way to protect the 99% of invention, while making ideas more free, I would support it 100%. Otherwise, I will stick with the best system we have until a demonstrably better one comes along.
By the by, not only corporations make money off ideas. Counterexample? Minecraft.
Yes indeed, the kind that has never once inflated away to worthlessness.
But, if you disagree, I'd be happy to trade my 12 year old car for, oh let's say, 100,000 of those worthless, electronically-stored dollars? Think about it; you give me some worthless, replicable data, and I give you something that will give you at least a year's worth of transport. It's a positive bargain!
Whoosh!
Money stored electronically at the bank is one of the classic counterexamples to the belief that all property is (or should be) tangible. The GP is taking a dig at people who subscribe to this view.
Out of curiosity, what logic leads to that conclusion?
Osmosis!
But it costs you time and attention, no matter how much money you pay. Why would you even spend your time on something that's so crap?
Why do assume that I'm not?
That's something I've never understood. How does crappy content encourage more people to download it? If I think something is worthwhile, then I watch it. If I don't, then I won't. Why would you continue to seek out and download shows (or music, movies, games, or any other form of entertainment) you think are crap?
Wait what? What exactly do you think advertising and marketing is for? It's not a luxury that corporations collect and attempt to outspend each other in. Corporations don't have luxuries (except when board members decide to give themselves pay rises or golden parachutes). If they spend money on something, they intend to make a profit. Regardless of how much money they spend on advertising, it is so that more people can buy it, which lowers prices. Let me repeat: this is regardless of how much money they are spending. If they were forced to spend less on advertising, through legal or consumer pressure, this would likely mean a suboptimal market awareness of the drug, corresponding to a drop in purchases, and a higher price to recoup R&D. The bottom line is, less people who need the drug actually obtain it.
I wholeheartedly agree that healthcare is especially important, probably moreso than any other consumer R&D. That's why it's especially important not to grind your anti-marketing axe here.
You know what I pity? People who don't get the irony of consumer product-based elitism. And no, I don't own an iPhone.
Of course it's censorship. If someone wants to tell people that their goods are genuine Chanel, and a Judge, in their capacity as a public servant, prevents them from doing so, it is censorship. Of course, we don't call it censorship, because the word "censorship" has some nasty fucking connotations, along the lines of 1984-esque dystopias, and something beneficial like censoring for the sake of trademarks really feels more like "protection", doesn't it?
What else is censorship without people typically calling it as such? We have libel/slander, threats, classified information, copyright (although its antiponents have taken to calling it that to invoke the afore-mentioned 1984-esque dystopian image), fraud, etc. Censorship is all around us. And for certain types of censorship, that's the way it should be.
Understanding doesn't have to be non-judgemental. Actually, let me clarify that: understanding doesn't have to remain non-judgemental. First comes understanding, then comes the judgement. When you mix up the order, that's what's commonly known as a knee-jerk.
Yes, your hypothetical argument is right. Censorship is a cultural phenomenon in the US, as is the opposition to censorship. Once you understand both, then you can begin promoting one over the other.
At the risk of being down-modded into oblivion I have to ask: Why? What possible reason is there that censorship, once started, inevitably never stops? Let's say, hypothetically, a government decides to ban the use of the word "exquisitely". Please explain to me the harm enough to warrant automatic vehement opposition, and demonstrate to me why this well-defined piece of censorship will necessarily spread.