…If nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property"
This is a dishonest response. Movies and media are not ideas. They are representations of ideas that take time and effort to create and that are created so that the artist that made them can make a living and pay their bills. Stealing those representations without compensating the artist for their time and effort means they can’t pay their bills which means they have to stop creating in order to get a job where the fruits of their efforts aren’t stolen.
No. The substance of it is irrelevant to my argument. You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not to put too fine a point on it - ideas are like assholes; everyone has them and most of them stink but the idea of an asshole doesn’t actually make you wretch the way the stench of an actual asshole might.
You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not quite; what makes ideas incompatible with exclusive possession is the same thing that makes digital content incompatible with exclusive possession - their intangibility. A person can labor for years on an idea, and retain exclusive ownership over that idea having not realized it to others; “but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
The same applies to digitally represented media.
You’ve made a statement about the labor involved in producing an idea or digital media, and I’m making a statement about the nature of intangible goods. Embodied labor isn’t the same as some objective moral or ethical imperative, nor is embodied labor the same as value.
If you want to watch something enough to pirate it, it has value.
Everything else you said is a dishonest argument that you would not accept for your own time, work, and effort. The mere fact that an idea is materialized into something more than an idea invalidates the crux of your argument. An idea is just that. An idea materialized into reality, even an intangible reality, is still more than the idea itself.
If you want to watch something enough to pirate it, it has value.
I haven’t claimed it doesn’t have value. I’ve only challenged your implication that ‘value’ and ‘market extractive value’ are -or ought to be- in balance. If you can acknowledge that not everything that has ‘value’ has a commensurate ‘market value’, then you should be able to see that a piece of digital media can have ‘value’ but doesn’t necessarily have a commensurate ‘market value’.
Demand is only representative of market value where supply can be said to be reasonably restricted, and if supply needs to be artificially restricted in order to justify it’s market value then the circumventing of that restriction can’t really be said to be ‘stealing’ in the moral or ethical sense of the word.
–Thomas Jefferson
This is a dishonest response. Movies and media are not ideas. They are representations of ideas that take time and effort to create and that are created so that the artist that made them can make a living and pay their bills. Stealing those representations without compensating the artist for their time and effort means they can’t pay their bills which means they have to stop creating in order to get a job where the fruits of their efforts aren’t stolen.
That statement makes no sense in this context, regardless of whether I reflect on its poor grammar or not.
Sure it does, you just don’t like the substance of it.
No. The substance of it is irrelevant to my argument. You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not to put too fine a point on it - ideas are like assholes; everyone has them and most of them stink but the idea of an asshole doesn’t actually make you wretch the way the stench of an actual asshole might.
Not quite; what makes ideas incompatible with exclusive possession is the same thing that makes digital content incompatible with exclusive possession - their intangibility. A person can labor for years on an idea, and retain exclusive ownership over that idea having not realized it to others; “but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
The same applies to digitally represented media.
You’ve made a statement about the labor involved in producing an idea or digital media, and I’m making a statement about the nature of intangible goods. Embodied labor isn’t the same as some objective moral or ethical imperative, nor is embodied labor the same as value.
If you want to watch something enough to pirate it, it has value.
Everything else you said is a dishonest argument that you would not accept for your own time, work, and effort. The mere fact that an idea is materialized into something more than an idea invalidates the crux of your argument. An idea is just that. An idea materialized into reality, even an intangible reality, is still more than the idea itself.
I haven’t claimed it doesn’t have value. I’ve only challenged your implication that ‘value’ and ‘market extractive value’ are -or ought to be- in balance. If you can acknowledge that not everything that has ‘value’ has a commensurate ‘market value’, then you should be able to see that a piece of digital media can have ‘value’ but doesn’t necessarily have a commensurate ‘market value’.
Demand is only representative of market value where supply can be said to be reasonably restricted, and if supply needs to be artificially restricted in order to justify it’s market value then the circumventing of that restriction can’t really be said to be ‘stealing’ in the moral or ethical sense of the word.
This guy desperately needs a thesaurus