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Originally Posted by Moejoe
And yet again you conflate atoms with bits.
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I suggest you re-read the posts in context. Ubkizz is suggesting that IP is a new idea (he's incorrect, copyright is hundreds of years old) and that artists survived just fine without IP laws in the past (which is true, but largely because art wasn't/isn't mass-produced like books). It's also worth noting that one of Mozart's sources of income was -- surprise! -- publishing his compositions. In fact, that was his major source of income later in his life.
Separately, the types of "copying" he referred to is not blocked by copyright laws. I can walk into an art gallery and make a copy of an artwork for my own private use; I can also be directly inspired and influenced by a work, within the scope of copyright. It's rare -- and I might add, pretty much a contemporary phenomenon -- for an painter to engage in such blatant and unauthorized appropriations that they run afoul of copyright law.
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Originally Posted by Moejoe
A copied painting is only discouraged because of the uniqueness and scarcity of the original object.
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A
forged object is discouraged (to put it mildly) because it is typically used for fraudulent purposes. Scarcity has nothing to do with it; you can still forge etchings, lithos, prints, even books.
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Originally Posted by Moejoe
It is worth ZERO because it is infinitely copiable, there is no scarcity in reproducing this object.
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"Value" is not necessarily linked to "scarcity." E.g. in Q4 2009 alone, Apple made $1.1 billion in revenues from the department that includes the iTunes store -- which sells infinitely copyable, DRM-free MP3's. Go figure.