[scotty79]

> I obviously can go around punching people in the face on the street. What use is there to forbidding that? Perhaps that it's beneficial for society to discourage people from doing certain things?

Right. I have to agree. Still, somehow copyright feels more like punishing people for not praying on Sunday than punching people in the face. All forbidden things are definitely not equal and some, naturally, feel more deserving of being forbidden and more easy to enforce the punishment for them without invading personal freedoms and privacy. It's entirely pointless to forbid things that don't (even potentially) harm living beings (there's no human right to having a viable business model) which would require permanent invigilation (even in private) for full enforcement.

> patents (N.b. copyright is far from the only law that applies to intellectual property) were created in order to encourage people to share their ideas

Which pretty much failed spectacularly and should have been ended about 100 years ago when it ran its course. Way before such abomination as software patents spawned in somebody's mind.

> Because exactly the sort of "free for all" rights you are arguing for meant a

The world is free for all. Every industrial economy that got big, got there by disregarding intellectual property. Even US, blatantly copying industrial designs from UK. Intellectual property is kicking off the ladder.

> huge incentive to keeping everything as secret as possible

There's only so much you can keep a secret if you want to go to market with it.

And despite wonderful protections of intellectual property many companies still choose to keep as much as they can secret. Because protections can't physically work 100% and they need to be 100% for them to work at all.

Patents serve many purposes but none of their stated goals.

> Finally, can you explain what you think stealing is?

Depriving someone of possession of something by taking the possession of it yourself. For data economy it can be slightly extended to taking the copy of information that is held by someone else without their permission (hacking basically). To be fair we should make another label for this act if we want to keep the original meaning of the word steal intact.

> Why is it a crime for me to take one bike to work but not the other, if they both stand unlocked outside the building?

Because you can keep your items in public spaces. This changes dynamics of theft a little bit. It is a crime to take my item that I left in publically accessible place because after you did that I no longer have the item.

If you were to just make a perfect copy of my bike that I left in public space, that would be totally ok because I would still have my bike.

The harm in act of stealing is not taking possession but depriving someone else of their possession.

[streetfighter64]

Well, I'm glad you at least seem to agree that taking information without permission is stealing. As in, hacking into a company's servers and copying their customer data, would be stealing, yes?

Now, if you're instead an employee of that company, and have access to their customer data (you're holding it), would you then agree that making a copy and selling it to somebody else, would be stealing? Or would you argue that because you as an employee got permission to hold the data, you thus own it and are allowed to sell it as you want? Or consider if you rent a VHS tape, does that give you ownership of the movie, and let you copy it as you want? If you store your code on a git server hosted by Microsoft, does that mean MS owns your code? If you hand in your laptop for repair, does that give the repair shop carte blance to make a copy of your hard drive?

Is the postal service allowed to read all your letters? After all, they're holding the letters, which would mean they own the data inside, and with modern tech it's easily possible to scan the contents of an envelope without opening or damaging it.

The crux of my position is that simply holding something, does not mean you own it. You seem to agree that physical items can be held by somebody who's not the owner, so why can data not?

To continue on with the bike example, what if I know you're out of town for a week. Then, by using your bike I'm certainly not depriving you of it. You might argue that I'm lowering its value by using it, but would you not then agree that piracy lowers the value of intellectual property?

[scotty79]

> As in, hacking into a company's servers and copying their customer data, would be stealing, yes?

I think stealing is when you remove possession and acquire it yourself. So if the hacker also deleted the information they copied then I'd call it stealing. The sheer act of accessing information not intended for publication, which is the main issue here, if data was not deleted, is more akin to eavesdropping than to stealing.

> Now, if you're instead an employee of that company, and have access to their customer data (you're holding it), would you then agree that making a copy and selling it to somebody else, would be stealing?

I'd say the same. Not really stealing. More like violating an agreement about the borrowed data. The crime doesn't stem from the nature of data or ownership but rather from violating signed agreement about keeping borrowed, private data to yourself. If no agreement was made or the agreement contained unlawful clauses, no crime.

> Or consider if you rent a VHS tape, does that give you ownership of the movie, and let you copy it as you want?

Since the movie is out, the information is no longer private. So requiring me to keep the movie to myself might be and example of what should be an unlawful clause in data borrowing agreements. Because that's something you can't reasonably enforce.

Same thing as if you leave your bike in public, out of view of the cameras unlocked. You are practically not afforded protections for your stuff in public places if you didn't reasonably protected it yourself.

If you publish your stuff, society doesn't owe you protection.

You might consider the game I bought, borrowed data. And it's fine. I might even abide by the rules of the borrow I actually agreed to. But if I download some stuff from the internet, I have no agreement with you so there are no rules to abide by.

> If you store your code on a git server hosted by Microsoft, does that mean MS owns your code?

Yes. Unless we have an agreement in which they declare they are going to keep it private and actually delete it on demand. In absence of agreement their ownership of the copy that I give them should be assumed. That's literally how data works.

> If you hand in your laptop for repair, does that give the repair shop carte blance to make a copy of your hard drive?

You are conjuring situations where the problem is not the ownership but privacy protection. In practical situations I am assuming they will make a copy of my drive and so do the people organizing computer repair, that's why the general advice is to clean the drive before you hand it over. If you don't want that, companies might sign a special agreement that they won't access private data on the device you handed them. Good luck enforcing that.

Again it has nothing to do with ownership.

> Is the postal service allowed to read all your letters?

Eavesdropping. Completely irrelevant to data ownership.

> The crux of my position is that simply holding something, does not mean you own it.

It means that. Unless it was borrowed or stolen.

> You seem to agree that physical items can be held by somebody who's not the owner, so why can data not?

It can be borrowed, stolen or owned.

> To continue on with the bike example, what if I know you're out of town for a week. Then, by using your bike I'm certainly not depriving you of it.

I definitely wouldn't call it stealing it if I'm never deprived of it. Rather borrowing without agreement.

> Then, by using your bike I'm certainly not depriving you of it. You might argue that I'm lowering its value by using it, but would you not then agree that piracy lowers the value of intellectual property?

I could agree with all that. But the actual punishment should be proportional to the damage.

And what's the damage done by a kid playing pirated game who'd never buy it? Zero.

What if you repaired my bike while riding it? Maybe I should owe you for the repairs?

What if a kid who plays a pirated game tells about it and somebody else buys a copy? That's improving the value of intellectual property.

Given marketing budgets, hype generated by pirates is worth millions. Piracy is the reason Windows is the most popular operating system. Piracy is the reason many games and other software succeeded. Piracy is not your problem. Obscurity is.