Taking advantage of something someone created on terms different than what they’re willing to offer it to you is not a “victimless crime.” (Just like jumping the turnstile in the subway is not a victimless crime even if there are free seats, or sneaking into a sports stadium.) At the margin it lowers the price everyone is willing to pay for yhe item.
Let me offer the opposing perspective.
Why should a business use the State to enforce a broken scarce physical property model at odds with how information honestly disseminates (impedance mismatch or category error) just so they can prop up their own business models? If their business models can’t be profitable without enforcing draconian and perhaps misapplied rules, then their business model should not be viable and we should rely on eg open source collaboration or hobbyists. Perhaps businesses SHOULDN’T have a “right” to create really complex movies music and software if it means causing far more others harm downstream.
Humans make up systems to enforce this or that “right”, which is nothing but a guarantee from some organization (eg a state) that they will fight to coerce someone to honor some agreement, even if you didn’t make one explicitly.
I never made an agreement to NOT listen to someone’s song. With a turnstile, I can be physically prevented from entering the premises until I agree to an agreement. The turnstile can be made “unjumpable” - and many are. If I didn’t explicitly agree to anything then maybe I can jump the turnstile, in a libertarian world where we have to explicitly agree to something.
Anyway, now let’s assume we are not in an ancap utopia. So people form organizations and they figure out what system of coersion works and what doesn’t.
The system of private property requires force to enforce, just as much as other “government” things. So it may be justified for personal protection and chattel property, but as you move further away from that, it may be less justified and have less payoff. Should a person be able to own an idea, or 50000 acres of land if others can put it to good use?
And how did they come to own it? “Homesteading” the land or idea? John Locke who coined the idea also said a man shouldn’t own more land than he can cultivate himself or arrange an organization to do efficiently, or society is wasting land. And also you may have massive rent seeking and sharecropping. Like how we had now with A&R departments and actual artists before Spotify. Or — sorry fellow entrepreneurs — how Facebook Google and others exploit their infrastructure monopoly and lock-in to have access to all your data and exercise control because there are no open-source alternatives.
Is this really the best system? Is it the most moral? You appeal to morality of the individual in the system but you must first consider the benefits and legitimacy of the system itself.
> Why should a business use the State to enforce a broken scarce physical property model at odds with how information honestly disseminates (impedance mismatch or category error) just so they can prop up their own business models? If their business models can’t be profitable without enforcing draconian and perhaps misapplied rules, then their business model should not be viable and we should rely on eg open source collaboration or hobbyists. Perhaps businesses SHOULDN’T have a “right” to create really complex movies music and software if it means causing far more others harm downstream.
There is zero harm to others downstream, because the only thing those people are being deprived of is a product that wouldn't exist at all without the "evil" content creators. You're not being deprived of anything when you can't download Avengers: Infinity Wars for free. You're just prevented from having your cake and eating it too. (I.e. consuming a product that was created in express reliance on the copyright system, without paying for it.) Which is the reason we allow companies to enforce this artificial scarcity--it allows creation of a product that people want more than the alternatives.
It's precisely because this scarcity is artificial that it's moral. If people wanted to consume content from "open source collaboration or hobbyists" then they would do it. Nothing is stopping them. But people don't want the hobbyist project, they want the $200 million Hollywood blockbuster. And if that's the case, people have no right to demand access to that content on terms different from what the creator is willing to agree to.
Draconian IP laws and content filters and DCMA abuse and cost of complying is harm. DRM software itself already has been proved to be a security problem even when handled by the biggest of tech corps.
These costs are externalized for copyright holders. These costs are real because those things already do happen to people. Unlike these existing costs, opportunities lost are only hypothetical. Saying that we should abolish IP is ridiculous but so is claiming that current laws and industry is reasonable in their reach for media control.
We should also consider the fact that someone not being familiar with a piece of art and not creating art being unable to use other work is harm. Though these costs are on par with hypothetically lost profits and hypothetically lost creators in their ephemerality.
>a product that was created in express reliance on the copyright system
This system severely overreaching and limiting freedom of people without showing a connection between implemented laws and technologies and the ability to produce. It may rely on some parts of system but not the other. It's up to copyright lobby to demonstrate if it does at all.
>It's precisely because this scarcity is artificial that it's moral.
So is price collusion and human torture. If drm and music are to grow on trees it wouldn't change a thing about the moral aspect of the thing. We're free to decide on the morality of copyright enforcement without looking at its nature.
Oh please. Are people not deprived of drug research that people around the world would do on the long tail if Big Pharma didn’t chill their activities? Is it good for the world that innovation is restricted by force to US Big Pharma?
“But if we didn’t have government, who would build the roads???”
“But if we didn’t have copyright, who would write all the software and encyclopedias?!? Oh wait...”
If you make a moral argument about a pirate in the system, prepare to get an opposing moral argument about the system itself.
How many people could have been cured of Malaria if we allowed open source drug research to flourish? In every OTHER science department eg physics people publish their ideas freely.
Just need to change drug regulations. Make solid frameworks for doctors/patients to evaluate risks of untested or partially tested drugs, and let them make their own decisions.
> the only thing those people are being deprived of is a product that wouldn't exist at all
They are deprived of interacting with the front lines of modern culture.
I think people have no right to view a film that has hidden in a box since creation. Once a film enters popular culture, I think the argument that the creator should continue to hold complete dictatorial control over it is questionable.
Let me offer the opposing perspective.
Why should a business use the State to enforce a broken scarce physical property model at odds with how information honestly disseminates (impedance mismatch or category error) just so they can prop up their own business models? If their business models can’t be profitable without enforcing draconian and perhaps misapplied rules, then their business model should not be viable and we should rely on eg open source collaboration or hobbyists. Perhaps businesses SHOULDN’T have a “right” to create really complex movies music and software if it means causing far more others harm downstream.
Humans make up systems to enforce this or that “right”, which is nothing but a guarantee from some organization (eg a state) that they will fight to coerce someone to honor some agreement, even if you didn’t make one explicitly.
I never made an agreement to NOT listen to someone’s song. With a turnstile, I can be physically prevented from entering the premises until I agree to an agreement. The turnstile can be made “unjumpable” - and many are. If I didn’t explicitly agree to anything then maybe I can jump the turnstile, in a libertarian world where we have to explicitly agree to something.
Anyway, now let’s assume we are not in an ancap utopia. So people form organizations and they figure out what system of coersion works and what doesn’t.
The system of private property requires force to enforce, just as much as other “government” things. So it may be justified for personal protection and chattel property, but as you move further away from that, it may be less justified and have less payoff. Should a person be able to own an idea, or 50000 acres of land if others can put it to good use?
And how did they come to own it? “Homesteading” the land or idea? John Locke who coined the idea also said a man shouldn’t own more land than he can cultivate himself or arrange an organization to do efficiently, or society is wasting land. And also you may have massive rent seeking and sharecropping. Like how we had now with A&R departments and actual artists before Spotify. Or — sorry fellow entrepreneurs — how Facebook Google and others exploit their infrastructure monopoly and lock-in to have access to all your data and exercise control because there are no open-source alternatives.
Is this really the best system? Is it the most moral? You appeal to morality of the individual in the system but you must first consider the benefits and legitimacy of the system itself.