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Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Not true. In fact, patent and copyright laws were drafted specifically to provide incentive to create products that would be mutually productive for society; without those laws, we would have less creativity and fewer products due to the lack of profit incentive, because industrialization makes it too easy to copy others' products/services and steal their potential profits.
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There was creativity before copyright law, and it also hasn't stopped the worst abuses on either end; for example, Eli Whitney having all his inventions ripped off by other manufacturers, and Thomas Edison legally stealing patents from inventors like Tesla. I don't know if we'd be better off without it, but the system we've been using is so broken its unbelievable.
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I understand the analogy, but it's not germaine here; the discussion is about redistributing easily-duplicated products, not reselling used products; and as I said earlier, trying to draw comparisons to physical products is an example of the bad metaphors that have driven this decade-plus-long argument.
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I was referring to the example of societies mutually assisting one another and the arguable theft of a primary sale from the tool manufacturer. Or am I the only one who sees that stupid "We cut corners so you don't have to" flyleaf on so many high school textbooks that're accusing the secondary market of sales theft from the publisher?
Ultimately, the metaphor of "theft of sales" is the same, isn't it?