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Comment by McSinyx | Hacker News Reader

You missed the ease of digital replication: one needs not participate in a sexual act involving children to replicate child pornography. It's not like it's a healthy thing to consume such material, but the distinction must be made to avoid the concept being abused by digital publishers who think one sharing an ebook with a friend would cause lost in their revenue.

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If I steal an apple from you and grow more apples from it and give them away, there is no difference to the act of stealing your apple and eating it.

As a side note: RMS seams to be totally against "stealing" digital GPLed code.

>If I steal an apple from you and grow more apples from it and give them away, there is no difference to the act of stealing your apple and eating it.

Certainly, but we talk about digital good here, stealing the first apple harms me (unless if I was not going to use it regardless), copying it however does not.

>RMS seams to be totally against "stealing" digital GPLed code.

Please explain what you mean by stealing here. He is against taking GPLed code, modifying it, compiling it, and then distributing the binary without distributing your modifications. He has no problem with selling the application/code. He has no problem with keeping the modifications to yourself as long as you do not share the binary. He has no problem with distributing the unmodified binary and/or code.

"He is against taking GPLed code, modifying it, compiling it, and then distributing the binary without distributing your modifications."

Yes.

If I take your apple, scan it in my StarTrek replicator, then put it back, I've not stolen anything. At worst, I've borrowed it without your consent. The fact that I can use my replicator to make as many apples as I want, which are just like the one I borrowed from you, is not stealing.

Not saying it wouldn't be wrong. But it's decidedly different from stealing.

Likewise, getting a copy of a copyrighted movie with Bittorent through the Pirate Bay is not really stealing. It may still be wrong, but since it does not deprive the original owner from their own copy of the movie, it's different from stealing.

In general, non-rival goods should be treated with different rules and laws than rival goods. Turning them back into rival goods like copyright does strikes me as a very bad idea. Artificial scarcity is… non optimal to say the least.

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