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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 1557741" data-attributes="member: 19675">Re: my Volvo analogyI know about the debate-like I said, I deal with copyright as part of my job.  I'm in the trenches.The only difference between IP and physical property is ease of theft.  Because of the ephemeral nature of many forms of IP, they are EXTREMELY easy to steal.IP (and the theft thereof) has been around as long as there has been language to transmit abstract ideas.The first guy to write down his engineering notes?  Those notes are IP.The first guy to write down his song?  Those musical notes are IP.There is a reason the Library of Congress and the Patent office require physical copies-PROOF.  Proof that you were the originator of the idea that the physical object is evidence of.But, you want a different analogy.OK, change the Volvo in my analogy into a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's War & Peace, clearly a form of IP in physical form.  I buy 5 copies in 8 years, each gets destroyed or stolen.  At what point can I walk into a store and say "Oh, I already bought one of these, but mine are all gone- I'll take THAT one to replace my lost copies.  Chow!"  The answer?  Never.Why?  In purely economic terms, each copy's price was based on things like paper costs, ink costs, salaries, etc. that affect how much it cost to do that particular print run, plus a little profit for the publishing house.  The copies you bought before did nothing to defray the costs of that current run, unless it is in exactly the same form, and even then, there are distribution costs, store overhead, and other salaries to cover.  By stealing that 6th copy, you have hindered the ability of the printer and the store to recoup their costs.  Those unrecouped costs will be figured into FUTURE printing projects as a projected cost of shrinkage, which will keep the book's cost higher than in might otherwise be.Its THEFT.Or say you have an eidetic memory.  You buy a ticket and go to a performance of either music or comedy (any kind of entertainment that can be reproduced by a solo performer).  You memorize their entire performance.  Do you have a right to reproduce that performance in its entirety without paying a royalty?  NO.  (You might not get caught, but that's a different issue.)  If you get in an accident and recieve a head trauma that causes you to forget that performance, do you have a right to go see that show again for free?  NO.Your purchase of a CD or a Book is like buying a ticket.  You are buying the right to enjoy that performance.  It is just that in the case of a book or CD, the performance media may last longer than your lifetime.</blockquote>

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