Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyMartin
The root of the stealing versus piracy debate seems to be a fundamental disagreement of what constitutes theft.
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I think it's rather a disagreement over what constitutes ownership. And whether intangible ideas - which is what books and songs and videos, without their obsolete physical media, are in the end - can be "owned". I don't think they can, because that ownership cannot be enforced, not on the level of billions of end-users. And a rule that cannot be enforced is useless. An astronomer might just as well claim ownership of a planet he's discovered - but other people will look at it for free, and there's nothing he can do to stop it, so this concept of "ownership" is useless in this case.
Which is why instead of the dysfunctional concept of "buying the idea from its author" we should be thinking about "rewarding the author for his idea". In those cases where this rewarding can be done through the usual mechanisms which imply "ownership" (such as patent right) - carry on by all means, no better mechanism has been discovered as yet. But in the case of music and books and videos, the old "ownership" model has plainly run out of steam and no longer serves its purpose. That should be recognized and a new business model should be created, instead of wasting billions on propping up the hopeless old one. It should be based on an easy, fair and equitable mechanism of rewarding the author, or on selling easy and convenient access to a complete library of titles rather than the actual "right" to view or read or listen to these titles. There's no point carrying on with feeble attempts to lock intangible ideas in drm cells in this digital age, or trying to make billions of end users abide by unenforceable copyright rules using this tired "piracy is theft" mantra. The problem is an obsolete and broken business model, not theft.