Quote:
Originally Posted by dmaul1114
It's the same thing to me.
As we move to digital products in certain industries, the definition of theft has to change.
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No, the legal system has to change to acknowledge a different economic circumstance: the end of scarcity in certain cultural areas. No need to proceed with an Orwellian subversion of the English (and other) languages. Authors will simply have to find another way to get paid, perhaps via a patronage system (which is already working with digital artists who work via commission), perhaps via direct subsidies (why shouldn't novelists and short story writers get grants and fellowships like their academic peers?). Marx made an insightful point about how when the means of production progress to a certain point, they burst asunder the legal bonds that legitimated the preceeding relationships of production. I think we are seeing that happen again with the digital revolution.