| Thought experiment: I leave $100 on a table, with a sign that says "do not take this money, it belongs to me", and I walk away - maybe to go to the bathroom or something. You come along and say to yourself "wow, I'd love a hundred dollars, but I can't take that money - it's not mine. However..." - and out of your back pocket you whip out your handy-dandy molecular duplication machine... ...which you then point at the money, press a button, and it spits out an identical duplicate of the money on the table. Satisfied, you walk away. I come back to the table, see the money undisturbed, pick it up, and go on my way. Have I somehow lost something or been diminished in some fashion? Let's say the same thing could be applied to goods - like someone makes a complete copy of your car, at no cost to them. Have you lost something by them now having a copy of your car? Let's say you build something, perhaps something unique. You create a video of it, and post some pictures of it on Ebay, Youtube, Craigslist, etc - because you want to sell it. Someone studies the design (the videos and images) and recreates it perfectly (this can be done, btw); have you now lost something because they have a copy of the item? |