[superdude]

What an absurd title and statement. Of course you can defend public libraries and oppose file sharing! It costs almost nothing to share digital files, while libraries have very real physical location costs and costs to maintain physical books (and maybe even to purchase digital books?). Not to mention the local community benefits a physical library offers.

[scintill76]

Why should abstract cost matter? You think the authors are saying, "Oh good, at least they're paying the local utility companies to keep their copy of my book air-conditioned!" ?

In both cases, a single copy is paid for and shared with potentially tens of thousands of users. Now, you may have had the cost and physical inefficencies in mind as a rate-limiter on the unpaid (to the IP holder) consumption of media, but Falkvinge called that a quantitative, not qualitative, difference that doesn't matter. Honestly I'm not sure I agree [1] -- but who gets to define "how many" or "how cheap" is too far? I'm pretty sure the IP lobby would kill all libraries, lending, and re-selling if they could. Is that fair?

[1] It's perhaps too much like saying that deploying automated networked license plate scanners in every inch of a city is OK, because it's "just like a cop standing on the public street corner observing which cars are driving by", and I would definitely be against the scanners.

[kethinov]

Exactly. We long ago accepted the compromise of buy it once, share it with many for free so long as only one person got to experience that copy at a time. (Or more accurately one household at a time at least since some content can be experienced as a group.)

In the digital age that "one person at a time" limitation seems far more arbitrary and limiting, which calls into question whether or not the original "one person at a time" compromise is still relevant in this day and age.

[jbob2000]

You didn't read the article. His point is that the purpose of a library is knowledge-sharing (and to your point, the expense of a library is for the greater good of knowledge-sharing). Since the purpose of file-sharing is knowledge-sharing, then they are similar in nature.

[nwatson]

A "real-world" library's goal of knowledge-sharing is balanced with the need of the content-provider to make some money to support distribution and authoring of books. The public pays taxes to fund libraries so that people who can't afford to buy (or choose to not buy) particular books can still access them. There's a natural brake on distribution in that each copy can be checked out to at most one library patron at a time.

The most direct analogy carried over to the electronic space is e-book lending systems with built-in DRM. These systems usually keep the N-number-of-copies-available-for-loan restriction in place. Unlimited file-sharing does not at all resemble the balance between the-good-of-public-knowledge vs the-right-and-need-for-publishers-and-authors-to-make-money that a physical library model provides.

[jbob2000]

I would argue that the "need for publishers and authors to make money" is where the issue lies, not in the means of knowledge transfer (libraries vs. file sharing).

Just like how governments subsidize libraries, so too should they subsidize file sharing.

[librvf]

Well, I read the article, and the author's point about a library being for knowledge-sharing is misleading and possibly even dishonest. It's over-emphasized and ignores other important realities about how and why a library works the way it does.

[jbob2000]

I wouldn't say it ignores, more that he's making a supposition (an implied one). He supposes that if libraries had no expenses, no physicality, and nobody had to get paid, it would resemble file-sharing.

[superdude]

The #1 purpose of file sharing is not knowledge sharing, it's entertainment sharing.

[jbob2000]

You don't read fiction? Libraries have massive kids sections, I doubt they're reading Applied Chemistry.

[superdude]

I'm responding to your specific argument that this is all about knowledge-sharing when it's not.

[jbob2000]

I am equating "knowledge" and "entertainment" and not making a judgement on what constitutes entertainment. If it can be known, then it is knowledge, regardless of whether or not it is fiction. So by that definition, it is all about knowledge-sharing.

[shripadk]

I don't understand how cost is an important metric here. Up until the 90s people bought encyclopaedias for reference. Today search engines have completely replaced them. One cost money while the other does not. Should you then defend encyclopaedias and oppose search engines?

[bediger4000]

Of course you can champion public libraries, and simultaneously oppose file sharing. Don't be ridiculous!

All it takes is either illogical, inconsistent thinking, or logically invalid thinking. There's no barrier to either of these, in theory or practice.

[chrisbennet]

"Of course you can champion public food banks, and simultaneously oppose stealing food. Don't be ridiculous!

All it takes is either illogical, inconsistent thinking, or logically invalid thinking. There's no barrier to either of these, in theory or practice."

Fixed it for you. ;-)

[scorchpt]

That is a fallacious argument. Food stealing (which you said) and food replication (which would be the fair equivalent) are different things, as are book stealing and book replication. I'm not making any judgements about neither of those, just pointing out the false equivalency.

Would you oppose if someone managed to buy just one single piece of food, then replicate it at a molecular level and at virtually no cost, and distribute it for free to the whole world, so that no one would ever have to starve ever again?

"Of course you can champion public food banks, and simultaneously oppose food replication and sharing. Don't be ridiculous! All it takes is either illogical, inconsistent thinking, or logically invalid thinking. There's no barrier to either of these, in theory or practice."

[bediger4000]

I don't understand how food, a consumable, physical object with a production cost much greater than zero, is the same as a book, which is a non-consumable physical object with a large production cost, or a file, which is not a physical object, and has a production cost so close to zero that it's not worth measuring. Can you explain a bit further how this "fixes" my statement, or my accusation of inconsistent or illogical thinking?

[chrisbennet]

Both are easily available without stealing - books (videos, ebooks) from libraries and food from food banks. Heck the files that are shared are usually very cheap - why not just rent/buy them?

Some will make the argument that things that are easy to duplicate are OK to steal. If I wrote a book, I can assure you it would not have a low production cost however easy it was to duplicate/steal/"share".

What is really at work here is that people have become accustom to stealing easy to duplicate works and now they will use all kinds of mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they aren't actually thieves.

[bediger4000]

Wait, copyright infringement isn't theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States

So you're just wrong, technically as well as practically.

[chrisbennet]

Interesting. I didn't know that.

What is the correct term for taking something that isn't yours?