Entrusting our speech to multiple different corporate actors is always risky. Yet given how most of the internet is currently structured, our online expression largely depends on a set of private companies ranging from our direct Internet service providers and platforms, to upstream ISPs (sometimes...
Here’s a scenario: I’m a wizard with the magical ability to clone any object I point at. I see a person with a Rolex watch on their wrist. I point to it and instantly a perfect copy of that Rolex appears on my wrist.
What got stolen? Who got robbed? Who is deprived of anything? And don’t say Rolex got deprived of money, because they still have exactly as much money as before, and nobody is “owed” profit.
If people could be owed profit just because they did work, then I could run around parking lots all day cleaning off people’s cars and then forcing them to pay for my services when they got back.
If people could be owed profit just for creating things, I could go around town singing my original music to people passing by and then forcing them to pay for listening to it.
Both of those scenarios are obviously ridiculous.
Pirating digital media is wrong in the same way that poaching unicorns is wrong. It’s not, because unicorns don’t actually exist, and neither does intellectual property, it’s a myth, a fable, a fabrication that is enforced by powerful corpos in order to forcefully extract undeserved profits from a market of artificial scarcity that they created in the first place.
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Respond to my scenario I proposed, if I magically cloned an object like a Rolex, what got stolen? Who is deprived of something? What are they deprived of and how?
Nope, I didn’t necessarily need the software. The point of that illustration is that people and companies aren’t owed profit on something merely because they created it. Money is owned in a mutual social contract, and I don’t agree to that contract for purchase. The reason why that’s not theft though in the case of digital “piracy” is because Nobody Is Being Deprived Of Anything.
Until you can show me clearly what Rolex or the person wearing the Rolex is being deprived of in that example I gave, theft hasn’t been demonstrated because theft means depriving somebody of something against their will or desire. Copying Is Not Theft.
Nope, wrong again. Read what I said more carefully, intellectual property, not just digital. If I go to the library, grab a textbook and hand copy that book onto my own paper, that is totally fine.
If Intellectual property is real, please explain to me how somebody can have an idea “stolen” from them? How would a person be “robbed” of a concept? Here’s an idea I’m making up: “Zixatubayponawa” which is a far away land where the rivers are purple sugar water. Tell me how you would “steal” that from me.