| What are we supposed to be "stealing"? Information is a mental construct that humans use to make an easier sense of the world. It's like a component of PCA. Or some tree in a random forest classifier. It's not an independent object existing "out there". (Unless you believe in platonic objects: in which case you need to bring evidence to court to support your — apparently — religious beliefs.) Information is just brains. And brains are already owned by minds/souls occupying/generated by them. The same goes for hard drives, DVDs, USB sticks, individual DNA molecules, etc. You can only "steal" information by stealing a brain or an actual USB stick. The same goes for "owning" it. (I will grant you that unauthorized access is a crime of trespassing, but in most cases copyright violations are not that.) tldr: You can't just invent an imaginary category that you pretend is ownable, in pursuit of some social goal, and then threaten to put other people into a rape cage if they don't follow along with your fantasy. Well, you can, but that would make you an immoral bastard™. [Analogy: Look, imagine someone comes to court and says that he's suing his neighbor for blocking his driveway for an hour. He is asking for $1M damages. The judge asks what the damages are for, and the plaintiff answers: "For the death of my pet and resulting emotional suffering." The judge asks: "Which pet?" The plaintiff says: "My imaginary invisible unicorn." How well do you think that would go? Now imagine if the plaintiff admits that he actually doesn't even believe himself in the existence of the unicorn but just wants to invent his existence as a legal fiction to deter blocking driveways. In case you didn't get it, this was all analogy for intellectual property. Downloaded from my imaginary platonic farm.] |