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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Harry" data-source="post: 1543002" data-attributes="member: 5468">Well, if we think about the idea - and I am using 'idea' in this case to represent the developed work, the content of the hypothetical book in question - in terms of "capital", then it does not have value from intrinsic materials, but it does have value due to the work done by the author, the value of the author's time.  Now, once the work is done the value of the work as a commercial product depends upon the demand for the    This means that while the market value of the material varies, there is no point at which it has zero value.  Additionally, the spread of the material, even among people who say that they would never have purchased it, will have an effect on the demand for the product.  But not strictly in the act of transferring the product from existing as an electronic file to paper.  Hang on, we're about to agree more in a moment.   What surprised me was that your line of reasoning could (it seems to me) easily be swung around into a claim as a moral basis for "file-sharing", the request I made of the pro-fileshare posters.  I didn't want to start from the idea that that was where you were going yourself, but I could see *someone* going there, so I wanted to address it first thing.  From the way I defined what I was referring to as an "idea" above, we're not as far apart as we could be.   So the electronic version of your product has value, value which can be enhanced by the medium but is not totally dependant on the medium.  Are we back to an idea as just a cool thought?  If Thomas Jefferson ran a fire-producing business, then if someone came in and lit his taper it would be a theft of services.  We are bouncing back and forth between an idea as the electronic aspect of a commercial product and an idea as an abstract iota of knowledge or enlightenment.  Context is also improtant.  I spent a lot of time, effort, and money to get my Ph.D., but if someone asks me a question I can answer about astronomy, physics, or something else I have expertise in, then I'll talk their ears off and consider it a full Thomas Jefferson moment, but someone sneaking into a class that I teach is stealing by virtue of taking for free what a number of other people are paying for.  Context.   It is interesting that both our descriptions of copyright could appeal to this sentence, but the difference is where the sense of moral power lies; does the  intellectual work done belong to society which allows the author to benefit from his/her work, or does the contructed work in some sense the property of the author, who allows the work to be inheirited eventually by society in exchange for society's protection of the individual's exclusive right to distribute their work for the time before that?   I will try this on Monday, when I'm back at work on a computer that can multitask. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  'Til then, I'll say that much of this seems reasonable (in fact, I'll skip the stuff that seems cool straight off) without necessarily endorsing this guy until I know his full position so I don't get slammed if he endorsed playing croquet with kittens or the extension of slavery to anyone who has got a knighthood, or some such .  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />#1-#4 I'm cool with, but I don't think that #6 is correct.  There are some monopolies that I think are positive goods.  For example, medicine is in some sense a monopoly, as there are strict governmental restrictions as to who can practice medicine.  I consider this as a good in that there are then at some checks are to what type of fruit loop can claim to be a medical doctor.  I think that the condition of having the police force as a state monopoly is much better than having them a part of competing private forces, and I would wager that the cost is lower as well.   To say that exclusive rights to material generated by the worker = a monopoly seems excessive.  If one source controls gasoline to an area (the Keewenaw penninsula of the UP of Michigan) that's a bad thing.  If only one company can produce a specific sourcebook, I cannot imagine that to be comparable.  As I see it, the author is the one being "taxed" by the limited life of copyright for society's help in enforcing the copyright.  True, but as I responded to in a different post, it is not a moral thing to do a non-moral thing to a bastiche.   Zowie.And here is where we break ranks.</blockquote>

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