Comment by pathjumper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pathjumper | Hacker News Reader

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That is because, right at its heart, the _universe_ does not respect owning information. Therefore it makes no sense that some subcomponent of the universe, say a person, or other entity could either. Sure, you can own a book on which information is printed, or multiple "copies"; that is, multiple physical books. But to the universe they are not copies, they are discrete physical entities. But when you are only splitting energy streams, that is making electronic copies; those are true copies. And this is where the lie that is "copyright" steps in. Literally, "the right to copy". As in, some entities, typically people, have it, and some do not. The fact that a new term had to be made up to give this fictitious idea a reality illuminates how baseless it is in the actual universe outside human society. Since the entire thing is predicated on a lie - the lie that the act of copying electronically can truly be controlled - it is intrinsic that it cannot last, since it has no basis in reality outside our minds. The would-be copyright owners sort of admit this when they try and use scare tactics to keep people from infringing on their so-called copyright. They do this with big FBI warnings (which the FBI had no hand whatsoever in creating), and those stupid "you wouldn't steal a car, would you?" ads. It sounds almost like someone is trying to convince _themselves_ of the veracity of owning information and the right to copy it. I, for one, think that the sooner the human race gets the hell over the idea that information can be owned, the better. There are other, better ways to make money through entertainment, and the entertainment industry is sooner or later going to have no choice but to face the music. It has been happening for decades, and the ubiquity of computers is making it worse for them, and better for everyone else, at last.

The universe also doesn't respect owning property. Saying that an arbitrary collection of atoms (a chair) belongs to another arbitrary collection of atoms (a human) is delusion pure and simple. It's just a delusion that a lot of arbitrary collections of atoms (humans) share.

Which, of course, is the whole point: property is an illusion with utility. For physical things like chairs, the concept 'makes sense.' What OP meant by invoking the universe was really to say that _people_ don't respect intellectual property.

And if you look closely, people don't respect physical property to an exact degree. We share, we borrow, we lend, we lease, we sometimes treat human work as property, we're generally just lazy with our accounting of ownership. Which, you know, is kinda cool.

Anyway, you use the word arbitrary as if the arbitrary nature of the line makes the line meaningless.

I think what Produce means to say is that many of our institutions and cultural facets are made up. There is very little natural backing for many of the laws and customs of human society (human rights? ha.) Invoking natural law to make a point about the utility of an abstraction makes no sense in context of all of the other abstractions that we use frequently in our lives (eg, property).

But again, that's precisely the whole point. The natural law is whatever we decide it to be. Whereas you say 'made up' with its connotations of fantasy, the 'unreal' nature of our abstractions does not distract from the fact that they're very real in practice.

In other words, there is nothing to invoke but natural law; and there is nothing behind natural law. Invoking natural law is _itself_ the means by which natural law gains utility.

What laws do you think are real? The only 'real' law is the Sparrow Predicate: what a man can't do, and what a man can do. _Everything else is built upon this._

That is to say, it is distracting and adding nothing sensible to point out that physical property, too, is an abstraction--it is merely an extension of the original point, which is: people don't buy into the intellectual property concept nearly as much as the physical property concept.

Actually, I was making the opposite side of the same point. Personally, I consider the existing abstractions to be as irrational as these new ones. It seems, to me, that people are hugely over-complicating life while arguing that survival is not possible any other way (or that the current way is the best we've got). The simple fact is that we fall prey to fear very often and construct these elaborate schemes to make us feel more secure. It would be more efficient to, as a species, at least make an attempt to face our fears. The issue is that we're biologically wired to survive in an environment of scarcity. We go kind of crazy (in the sense that our ideas do not match reality) when things are abundant.

The way in which owning a physical thing "makes sense" is that you can defend a physical thing. You can move it to a location that's easier to defend, or build defenses around it, or whatever. Physical property is about defensibility; it's not a metaphor, but a capability. Information-as-property is a metaphor, precisely because defending the part you "own" of (what is otherwise) someone else's computer is so difficult as to be effectively impossible.

I agree. That's exactly why they can't and will never be able to stop piracy on the Internet. Copying and sharing information on the Internet is designed into the Internet, and it's a fundamental principle of the Internet. Trying to stop it through outside "artificial" laws will not work. They manage to stop one thing and 10 better alternatives appear.

This sounds a lot like the excellent article "What Colour are your bits?" http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Well worth a read for what I think is a good way to understand the legal vs technical perspective of copyright.

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