[lesuorac]

Anthropic won't submit a spreadsheet of all the books and whether they were purchases or not. So trivially, not every book stolen is shown to be later purchased.

As just a matter of society, I don't think you want people say stealing a car and then coming back a month later with the money.

[thedevilslawyer]

While no one wants anyone to steal a car, almost no one would mind freely cloning a car. The trouble truly is that 3d-printing hasn't gotten that good yet.

[layer8]

The car would be unlikely to exist if its maker had to expect free clones without compensation. So yes, people would mind.

[riskable]

Completely untrue. If some clever engineer or consortium of engineers designed a 3D-printable car for 3D printing-and-manufacturing companies to make then it surely would exist. If you buy one from a Ford dealership you'd be getting the Ford-branded version which may have their own tweaks to the design.

It makes perfect sense to me that the big carmakers could get together some day and develop a handful of car platforms that all their cars will be built upon. That way they can buy the parts from any number of manufacturers (on-demand!) and save themselves a ton of money.

They kind of already do that, actually =)

[johnnyanmac]

If 3d printing was that good, stealing a car would be moot because production costs would come way down and only need to cover cost/procurement of materials and paying back the black box.

Regardless, I don't think the car is an apt metaphor here. Cars are an important utility and gatekeeping cars arguably holds society back., art is creative expression, and no one is going hungry because they didn't have $10 for the newest book.

We also have libraries already for this reason, so why not expand on that instead of relinquishing sharing of knowledge to a private corporation?

[MyOutfitIsVague]

I dislike framing art as something unimportant. Art is a vital part of being a human and part of a culture. We've grown accustomed to our culture being commoditized and rented back to us, but that doesn't mean the culture is unimportant, or such a state of affairs is acceptable.

[fallingknife]

Stealing a car deprives the previous owner of the car of possession and use. It is a criminal charge and you will be punished for it regardless of the monetary value of the car. The owner of the car could also sue the thief for financial damages caused by not having the car for a month, which won't be more than the cost of an equivalent rental for a month, so it's not even worth bothering.

Copyright infringement does not deprive the copyright owner of its property and is not criminal. So in this case only the lawsuit part applies. The owner is only entitled to the monetary damages, which is the lost sale. But in this case the sale price was paid to the owner 1 month later, so the only real damages will be the interest the publisher could have earned if they had got their money one month earlier.

[riskable]

Your take on how copyright infringement works only counts for unregistered copyrights. If the copyrighted works are registered with the copyright office statutory damages apply:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504