[safety1st]

I don't know what fantasy realm you live in where people are "trading" with Google when they watch a YouTube video. No such thing happens. No money changes hands, there is no transaction.

What does happen, is I make a request, and Google sends some bits to me over the Internet for free, and then those bits are sitting on my PC, and my PC is my property. I have the right to do whatever I want with my property and the bits on it. If I want to transform the bits in some way, render video from some of them and not from others, all on my PC in my own home, then I can. With a few exceptions, courts have upheld that general right. Ad blocking isn't illegal, circumventing their anti-ad blocking isn't illegal, and it doesn't interfere with a "trade" because there wasn't one, Google just sends some bits for free to anyone who asks the right way.

Now Google can of course choose to refuse service to me for any reason they want. They can make their anti-ad blocking more sophisticated. That's fine, I'll use a competitor in that case, and we need to make sure the government enforces the antitrust laws on the books so that there's more competition against Google anyway. Whether YouTube is a criminal monopoly or not is currently up for debate, probably the answer is yes.

At any rate your understanding of the relationship is legally and morally flawed. You claim there is a trade between me and a probably criminal organization, where in fact there is none. On the other hand my right to control my property is one of the most fundamental rights out there. You better believe Google feels that way about their property and spends billions to protect/expand their own property rights!

So I am confused as to why you want Google to have property rights, but not the rest of us.

But hey, "You will own nothing and be happy," right? We're all really just renting our hardware I guess? It's 2023 and the concept of us little peons owning and controlling anything is obsolete, just do what Master says right?

BTW, FWIW my property rights are inalienable. I possess these rights because I was born a human, yes they are also upheld in the US Constitution, UN Declaration on Human rights etc. While government has mostly upheld them they don't come from government, they come from us being born human, so even if a government said what I was doing was illegal, it would be moral to ignore that government, resist and do it anyway. What's crazy to me is that people seem to be OK with handwaving away a basic human right just so that a corporation can make more profit off of entertainment content.

[xvector]

By your logic, because you own your hardware and can do whatever you want with it, you should be allowed to hack into other computers. After all, it's just pressing keys on a keyboard you own and sending bits from a computer you own?

Your incredibly reductionist take does not consider the fact that you exist in an ecosystem of relationships and economics.

[derangedHorse]

That’s not what he’s saying. The statement is that he’s free to manipulate his computer as his property and since all the data that resides on it. There are exceptions to this, namely when it comes to infringing on the rights of others, but with the case of client side data the argument stands true.

The flaw in your thinking comes from not knowing that one can acknowledge property rights without the notion that anything can be done with their property. A baseball bat may be mine but it doesn’t mean I have the right to hit someone else’s property with it. I can, however, paint, carve, or otherwise destroy my bat without serious consequence.

[safety1st]

Nope. Wrong. That other system is someone else's property. You don't have the right to vandalize someone else's property, ergo, breaking into another system over the network and causing damage to it is illegal.

Property laws are just as relevant to computer systems as they are to anything else.

[Jensson]

> I have the right to do whatever I want with my property and the bits on it

That is false. You might think that you should have that right, but you don't.

[oaththrowaway]

Come and take it