[mgraczyk]

To put your "arrangement of bits" trivialization into a more realistic perspective: A 3x2 true color bitmap with just 6 pixels requires 144 bits to store. There are thus 2^144 such possible images.

Lets pretend that every computer connected to the internet today starts randomly generating images. Lets optimistically say they can generate 1 million per second each, and optimistically assume there are 3 billion such computers. For any particular image as described above, these computers have an expected time to generate the image of around 2^24 years. That's almost the age of the universe so far. Increase the image size to 3x3 and those computers will effectively never generate the image (expected time something like 2^75 times the age of the universe).

Those bits in an image aren't arbitrary. Do not trivialize the importance of digital content by equating a picture to an "arrangement of bits." Even a seemingly very small arrangement of bits is extremely special.

[indrax]

I don't think that the non- arbitrariness of content changes the assertion - that attempting to own content is rent seeking or begging.

[gnaritas]

The uniqueness of an image is meaningless, it doesn't in any way stop it from being a simple arrangement of easily copied bits and absent such scarcity, the notion of property is meaningless. Property only makes sense when something is scarce.