[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

No, it's pretty clearly emotional. See my previous post as an example of why.

Tell it all those professors who teach courses on business ethics. (Hmm..if there's no such thing as business ethics, is it unethical to teach that there is...?) Or any ethics, for that matter. Sure, there's an emotional component, bound up in evolutionary psychology and cultural context. So what? Just because something has an emotional dimension does not mean that it is irrational, which seems to be what you are implying.

Also, you may want to read Daniel Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. He discusses how people act in a highly irrational (yet predictable) way to "free (gratis)".

Sounds interesting. (Of course, if it's not in ebook format, it doesn't exist for purposes of this discussion...)

There's no doubt that people react irrationally to "free." That does not mean, of course, that all reactions to "free" are irrational, assuming that is what you are implying.

It doesn't matter how much it costs to produce a good. It doesn't even matter if you charge an outrageous price -- as long as you aren't engaging in anti-competitive behavior, or claiming that you are selling X when instead you are selling Y.

E.g. DeBeers acted immorally when it essentially cornered the market and inflated the price of diamonds. Gold bugs, on the other hand, are not engaging in immoral actions if they bought gold when it was cheap, and sell when the price is higher -- even though the seller did absolutely nothing to "improve the value" of the gold.

Certainly the legal realm and the ethical realm overlap. But they are not coterminous. Kovid has explicitly said that he's not making a legal argument. Nor, for that matter, is he making an argument based on economic rationalism. He's making an ethical argument. You apparently do not believe that there is an ethical dimension to economic activity, other than to obey the laws, legal & economic. So you reject the premise of the discussion.

But since Kovid is making an ethical argument, you are not engaging his argument when you make legal or economic arguments.

You are welcome to refer to such an individual as virtuous if you like. But that does not mean that it is unethical to request payment for PD works.

All ethical behavior is virtuous, isn't it? Let's don't get off on trying to distinguish terms. For the time being, we can use Ethical/Moral/Virtuous, or EMV, at least for a post or two. It's not catchy enough to survive any longer than that.

It is not unEMV to request payment for PD works. It is unEMV to fail to reveal to the buyer that what appears to be offered for sale is in the Public Domain. Different things.

That's real sweet, but it's simply not how PD works. PD means that no one controls it anymore.

So what? Nobody disputes that. We are in total agreement that PD means that no one controls it anymore. And we are in total agreement that anyone can offer PD material for sale. What we don't agree on is whether the seller has an EMV obligation to disclose that the material is PD.