Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
You aren't even owed something for something. I could write a manuscript and spend a year doing it. That doesn't meant it worth anything to anybody. (With my talents, I'd probably have to pay somebody to burn it....) Karl Marx is in the 360 degree position. Labor has no intrinsic value at all. It only has value, when the end result is something that somebody else is willing to exchange something else for. No more, no less. If nobody is willing to trade for it, all the labor in the world is valueless.
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But the point is that
you have the right to set the price of that manuscript. You have the absolute and exclusive right; nobody else. You can say "you have to pay me $100 if you want to read my book" and all anyone else can do is decide whether or not to pay it. They don't have the right to say "it's not worth $100 so I'm just going to take it anyway". That's the whole point of copyright. Yes, you may well write a lousy book which nobody wants to pay for - that's something the market will decide for itself - but the right to determine the price of your work is vested by the law in you, as the author, not in the reader.