[ddevault]

No one has a right to a viable business model. There are other ways to make money.

I also oppose companies like Nestle monopolizing water supplies to sell back to communities at a premium. If they're not allowed to do that, then their employees will have to find something else to do, or they won't be able to feed their family and their children will go hungry. Naturally, we'll not speak of any of the benefits which might be possible if we eliminated their business model. The only consequence of any import is that their employee's family will starve and die.

This is clearly a false argument. Intellectual property is based on an artificial scarcity and has no basis in the tangible value of goods and services. It's a kind of intellectual rent. It should not be granted special status in law.

[Jasper_]

The expectation here is fair trade. They are providing a good for sale with a price. If you do not pay the price, you do not get to enjoy the good, regardless of if the distribution model inherently enforces its trade value through scarcity or not.

The last several thousands of years of society and economics are based on this principle. Capitalism depends on it. You can be against capitalism and work towards achieving that end. But until we get there, we need to make sure that those in a society built around capitalism obey these fair trade rules.

If you don't want to pay for your software, don't use software that's offered for pay. There's a whole market of free software out there.

[bscphil]

You're going back to the moral argument against intellectual property, and I get you, it's sort of compelling. My point was that suggesting that no one stands to lose anything if we throw out the concept is a bit bonkers. Schematically the argument is something like this:

1. Under capitalism, the only way someone who makes something for others can be sure of providing for themselves and their dependents is if they have a property right in the things they make, thereby ensuring that it has exchange value for them as a commodity.

2. Property rights in intellectual or abstract creations do not exist. Because (insert moral argument), no one ever truly has an intellectual property right. (your premise)

Conclusion: People who create intellectual or abstract works should not be sure of providing for themselves and their dependents, and should therefore do something else and find "other ways to make money". In fact, we can't even say that people forced into some other work (or starvation) have lost anything, because they never had a moral right to it to begin with.

Me: Welllllll

I hope it's obvious that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. (Though we can get into that if you like.) I think it's also obvious from this perspective that this is certainly not like the Nestle case. Nestle is making things worse by monopolizing water that they didn't even create and would exist if they did not. Artists are people who create things that you and I love which brighten our lives, and are asking that they not go hungry in exchange. They are not seizing a pre-existing work of art and holding it out in exchange for an income, they are instead creating things and witholding them to ensure an income the only way that is possible under our present system of capitalism.

I want to live in a world where artists can be assured of not going hungry. I certainly don't think we need intellectual property to get ourselves there, and I'm nearly certain most artists themselves don't intrinsically love intellectual property. But this means we need an alternative. What does that look like: UBI? Something even more drastic? That's the question I was getting at toward the end of the comment you replied to.