[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I own the hard drive. How I choose to arrange the little magnetic islands on the platter is my business. I do not exchange money to possess a copy of it, but sometimes I have to wait three days while libgen.li is doing whatever the fuck it's doing (being DDOSed, having Russian FSB datamine the logs, downtime to have all 14 million epubs get their covers replaced with the fuzziest 141x296 cover image that's a bad scan of a worn out paperback printed in the early 1980s, etc).

Copyright is unfortunately like one of the supernatural demons. You draw the little chalk circle on the ground and voice the incantations, and you think you're in control. That it can't leave the circle. But once summoned, this demon does not go away, and it just ignores the circle... it's just a scribble in chalk. Then you run around gibbering forever, crying about how it should've worked, you should've been safe while ignoring that it's a demonic force hellbent on burning down the Library of Alexandria and plunging humanity into a new dark age. Reject copyright. You'll never get it to play nice. They always feel hungry, always trying to take more. Every book on the New York Times Book Review Notable 100 list is available for 4 minutes of your bandwidth. Every Hugo winner, every Pulitzer novel, ever Nobel winner, every trashy little magazine you liked to skim through when you had to go to the grocery store with mama as a kid, all the classics of antiquity, everything. They're right there, waiting for you.

[sneak]

> I own the hard drive. How I choose to arrange the little magnetic islands on the platter is my business.

Most people do not agree, in that they think arranging the magnetic fields in your drive to represent and store child pornography should be punishable.

It isn’t a stretch then to presume that storage of other types of data might also be proscribed.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Most people do not agree, in that they think arranging the magnetic fields in your drive to represent and store child pornography should be punishable.

I do not do that. Thus, the example is irrelevant. Though it might actually be a good example as to how people use excuses like that to violate others' liberty even when they're not engaged in that particular reprehensible activity. Even before you finished reading that sentence, the little "but you might" thought popped up in your head.

>It isn’t a stretch then to presume that storage of other types of data might also be proscribed.

I don't dispute that it is proscribed. I simply do not care. When copyright maximalists have to stoop to "what about child pornography" arguments, I think it is more than reasonable that people simply stop listening right at that point. Nothing else they say can or should ever matter.

[sneak]

I think you must have misunderstood me. I'm not a copyright maximalist, in fact I am against all copyrights and IP and even the existence of a state to enforce same.

I'm pointing out that under our current system, our society has banned storage of certain digital material. It is not inconsistent with our current system to expect other types of digital material to be banned similarly.

> I own the hard drive. How I choose to arrange the little magnetic islands on the platter is my business.

It's not just sequences of magnetic fields; it's what those magnetic fields represent that cause them to be legislated upon. Thus, your implied argument that you should be free to do whatever you wish simply because it's just magnetic fields on your own device (an argument I agree with 100%, fwiw) is not really a rebuttal in this case because our current system does not recognize or permit that right, and a majority of people in our society agree with that circumstance.

It's nothing whatsoever to do with what types of files you personally do or do not store. The CP example was simply an example of one type of banned magnetic field patterns. Another would be bulk stolen PII.

I actually agree with your viewpoint; but ours is a minority opinion that is not reflected in society or law. Even though there is no victim when a digital file is copied, a majority of people in our world do not want possession and distribution of certain files to be legal.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

My apologies then. It's a heated subject for me I guess.