[talmand]

By the rest of us I'm guessing a small number of people who have high ideals outside of reality? Your definition almost literally means no one has ownership over anything when it is your "right" to take it as you please.

How shall we define the act of taking property without due compensation that the owner of said property expects?

[nbouscal]

You seem to be acting intentionally dense. Surely you understand that the difference being discussed here pertains specifically to duplicable content, where the property involved is "intellectual property" and much more open to alternative interpretations than things like land or food.

[talmand]

No, I'm not dense, I see property as property. You act as if I don't know what's going on technology wise. But I do know and understand, it's not a difficult situation to comprehend. Implying I'm dense or any other derogatory term is just an attempt to dismiss me without having to actually consider what I'm saying. You shouldn't do that because that's typically the defense of someone who has little to back up their side of the debate.

You simply want to redefine things so you can apply your alternative interpretation of ownership in a way that allows you to obtain someone's property without compensating them for it. You feel entitled to someone's work because it's easy to duplicate it. It could take an artist weeks or months to create their work and you feel they deserve nothing because you can copy it in seconds. That's a sad justification.

Whether the fact it can be easily duplicated is irrelevant. Someone created that work with their time that they can't get back. They spent a moment of their life away from other things creating this that they can't get back. They spent resources (not necessarily money) creating this that they can't get back. None of that can be duplicated in seconds. If they wish to be paid for granting you access to that work then they should be compensated as they wish. If you don't agree with the price of admission then you don't get access. Thinking otherwise is admitting you feel you are entitled to it because you simply want it and the original creator can suck it. You are saying the creator's time and effort is worth nothing.

I simply cannot agree with that way of thinking.

[nbouscal]

I didn't say that you were dense, I said that you were acting dense. I also didn't espouse any of the positions that you credited me with, rather I simply pointed out that this is a complex issue. You have acted throughout this thread as though this were black and white, and as though "stealing" music were the same as stealing bread or any other physical object. The specific post that I replied to was the most telling instance of this. I'm not arguing for a position on either side of this issue right now, I'm simply telling you that if you want to have a discussion about it, you have to at least come to the table with the recognition that there is a rational basis for the opposing point of view. You can disagree, sure, but the way that you are doing so is far from productive.

[talmand]

Ah, ok, I see what you mean by not claiming I'm dense but just what I'm saying. My bad.

Also, again my bad, I'm attributing the whole discussion onto you instead of specifically your statement. I tend to lump everything together when multiple people respond throughout a single thread as though they are in agreement with the thread as a whole. I'll have to work on that.

I fully recognize the opposing position in this debate, I understand the thought behind it, I use to agree with it. But at this point, exactly as you point out, I highly disagree with it today. For the most part, I see people wanting to alter the definition of ownership for their own benefit to the detriment of the original creator. That the simple idea that a song can be perfectly copied countless times without damaging the original copy is somehow license to demand that the original creator hand over all their ownership rights without compensation is just wrong. It is as simple as the "black and white" example of stealing bread or any other physical object. I would give more credit to discussions about stealing bread because it's possible a human being stole it to survive, no one needs the latest hit song or movie to survive. If time and resources were spent in the creation of the product then I fail to understand why it's wrong for the creator to expect compensation, if they desire it.

Rational basis? What exactly is that in this case? Because I've never seen it. If anyone can give me a rational example of why the "I want it, it's easy to copy, therefore it should be mine" way of thinking is justified, then I'll reconsider my position.

[nbouscal]

I inadvertently focused this discussion too much on the duplicability aspect of the argument, when there are other factors at play as well. For example, if someone purchases a song and then plays it on speakers, and you are nearby and listen to it, I've never heard someone claim that you've stolen the music. Similarly, if you go to a music video on youtube, then listen to it while switching to another tab, you also have not stolen the music. Yet if you download the exact same song from a torrent site, then listen to it, and then delete it, the claim is that you have stolen the music. The dividing line here seems arbitrary and difficult to pin down. In every case, you had the same auditory experience. In the latter two cases, you had the same sequence of bits stored in memory, the same instructions execute on your processor. Yet only in the latter case have you stolen something. So, what is the property? What, exactly, is it that you have stolen? The fact that this isn't completely trivial to answer is my justification for claiming that there are, at the very least, some shades of grey in this issue.