[klez]

> Can I freely use your toilet then? your electricity?

No because once you used them I don't have them anymore. There's a reason IP has different rules than physical property.

> You pay for the plumber, why don't you pay for entertainment?

Ok, that's a more appropriate analogy, but then again, should my plumber get a recurring fee for the work they already did, when I use the faucet to give drinks to my friends?

[worldshit]

> No because once you used them I don't have them anymore.

I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again.

> when I use the faucet to give drinks to my friends?

But your friends all have their own house with their own plumbing they paid him for, so he can continue making a living from his craft. Writing a book takes months or years, not 2 hours like repairing a toilet, so of course the author needs to ask for money from everyone who wants to access it.

[klez]

> I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again

We're moving the goalpost here. And we're still talking about physical property (or possession) vs. intellectual property. I suggest we stop with that line of reasoning/metaphor.

> But your friends all have their own house with their own plumbing they paid him for, so he can continue making a living from his craft.

Again, the metaphor does not hold. Such a situation only means that the plumber is the only plumber in town. If we have multiple plumbers (so we can stick to the metaphor) my plumber can't forbid me to use my plumbing for certain uses (like watering my plants or offering water to my friends for free or for a fee).

> Writing a book takes months or years, not 2 hours like repairing a toilet, so of course the author needs to ask for money from everyone who wants to access it.

So it's just a quantitative difference? I can pay 1 cent per 1000 toilet flushes then. Seems fair.

My point is, I think these kind of metaphors don't work here precisely because intellectual work is its own thing.

[account42]

> I mean entering your house, doing my business in your toilet and leave. I won't take your toilet with me, I'll come back when I need it again.

If your use of my toilet doesn't affect me in anyway then I don't see why I should have a problem with that. If we are talking about you stinking up the place, using all my toilet paper and blocking the john whenever I need to go then we are talking about something very different from "IP".