What copyright law prevents is for you to copy the stream of bits from the original source.
The person copying clearly values that arrangement, or they wouldn't be copying it.
If I have an empty hard drive and copy someone’s mp3 a thousand times on it, without permission, what is really lost? Have I really harmed this person or stolen from them in any meaningful sense? If I then delete the data, is that really justice?
Both directions lead to some laws that seem wrong at face value - illegal primes on one side and “pro” revenge porn on the other. I only argue it’s not as clear cut as physical property, and that we are probably too far on the digital copyright side, rather than the data is free side.
But if it wasn't worth something, you wouldn't do it.
So the person that created it wants a certain value, and the person copying it wants to copy it but doesn't want to pay that value.
A physical object that you "own" was created from something literally no one created. The person you bought that from had no more right to that natural resource than anyone else (except that people with guns say they do). By "owning" that natural resource they had no process in creating they are keeping it from other people that could have made other things out of it.
However, ideas and digital things are not created from a limited, natural resource. Me keeping it from you is not keeping you from making your own idea or abstract thing from the same "stuff".
I invite you to apply this logic to your personal data.
And I don't get paid for having my data taken and sold, except in "free services"
I think there has to be some distinctions for what qualifies as data with monetary worth. I don't know where exactly that line should be drawn, but I think (as you've made clear with the personal data example) that at some point data goes from an arbitrary arrangement of bits to something of value.
I don't understand how things can apparently have no restrictions just because it comes down to "digital bits".
Life and the physical objects within it are "just ~~bits~~ molecules", that we re-arrange in specific ways.
People spend time making things that we like and enjoy. Observing that as "certain bit arrangements" completely downplays the work and ideas that the author(s) put into it. Why does transferring that electronically instead of acoustically/visually/physically mean we throw ownership out the window?
No one is forcing people to pay for musicians' or film makers' "specially arranged bits". People just feel entitled to having things for free, completely ignoring the time, effort, production costs etc that went into producing said things because the end products now are -digital-.
Physical things are scarce thus we are face with the inherent choice of deciding whom has the privilege of eating a sandwich or living in a particular house. The method of distributing goods is often capricious, unfair, subject to every existing bias but at least it represents a choice we must make. We can't both eat the whole sandwich.
A pattern of bits isn't a physical thing in the same class at all it is a restriction on which bits 2 parties unrelated in every fashion to the creator may transmit between each other. It's not a sandwich it is a recipe. It is granting a singular owner the privilege over say the concept of ham and cheese on white bread and demanding that people not make each other sandwiches that are identical in construction to the "owner" of that recipe under the theory that this will encourage people to develop more new and exciting sandwich types.
We aren't throwing ownership out the window. In fact traditional ownership never came in the window in the first place its a mile up in orbit. What you are arguing for is an entirely different class of thing in need of its own thought process and justification. If you are going to justify it then it must necessarily be on its own terms with its own implications not by leaning overmuch on traditional property.
Pretending its the same leads to many logically nonsensical things like Sony Bonos widow suggesting that copyright ought to be forever like owning a house so that the numerous and useless great great grandchildren of the creative who have nothing to offer us can tax all of creation to pay for the drugs they will probably end their pointless lives with. All of art is derivative thus endless copyright would cede all of the creative universe to the heirs of the current creative class who weren't burdened by paying tax to their predecessors. Alternatively logically nonsense like eventually all common reasonable arrangements of notes belonging to somebody.
The truth is copyright was invented as a tax on society to gift to the rich and useless and only then adapted as a method to ensure publishers paid writers in an era when printing was expensive. Even now most of the money sticks to business people not creators. We would be well rid of it.
Nothing is being constructed by the end user. A music album is a finished product, encoded into bits from an original creation by the author. This is a side-effect of how computers innately function, and doesn't change the fact that authors are -not- selling recipes to build products, they are selling finished products. There is no difference ideologically between selling an LP or a CD or a zipped download; the encoding and distribution mechanisms are different, but the customer still purchased the same thing: a complete product that can be played by equipment that understands how to decode and play it.
If someone singularly came up with a song, then of course they are the singular owner. Making art and music is a complex process, and specifically with music production one ends up with things that have never been constructed in that particular musical and instrumental arrangement, that key, with those musical ideas, those rhythms and note placements, etc. To say that ownership is just impossible ignores essentially -all- of the work that goes into making things like music. It's not like someone just pushes a button and calls it a day...
"Pretending its the same leads to many logically nonsensical things"
No, companies will always make absolutely ridiculous claims for copyright. Whether it's digital or not. This is separate to the idea of ownership of something whether digital or not.
"All of art is derivative thus endless copyright would cede all of the creative universe"
No one is arguing that people can claim copyright ownership on any and all works that may have been inspired from it. This is a strawman argument and also has nothing to do with digital vs physical copyright. It also completely ignores that songs, etc, are much more than mere constructions of notes.
The current implementations of copyright protection are pretty bad.. But that doesn't mean the idea in general is bad. Artists, just like anyone else, need to get paid for their work. You and I do not automatically deserve things just because they are distributed electronically now. Artists still deserve to have ownership of the things they create, even if they distribute them electronically.
No one is forcing anyone to go out and buy music or other art, it is an elective choice because one specifically desires that exact sound, which can be distributed as bits now. However, people aren't going out and "buying bits", they are buying specific products. The fact that things can be represented as bits is entirely irrelevant to both parties aside from not needing to lug around physical items.
He is very clearly selling the finished product of his work and time. The same is true when a musician sells one a cd he is selling the literal finished product of his work when he sells it fixed in a physical form. All the old rules of commerce apply to that good. The same is even true of an mp3. He is selling you the work of his computer to transfer to your computer the bits required to reproduce his sound.
The problem is that ultimately this very traditional payment of goods and services which works so well with sandwiches starts to break down with cds and mp3s because one doesn't need to steal anything at all cut the creator out of the loop. If one likes one can simply make your own sandwich or give a copy of a song to a friend. As soon as you aren't doing business with the author he has no inherent privilege over your interaction. In order to forbid cutting him out of the loop you must grant him new privileges over others property that resemble traditional property not at all.
You can grant him the right to be the only one allowed to put meat between bread, patents, or you can grant him the right to be the only one to produce with their own materials sandwiches identical or nearly enough to his own recipes copyright. These are always restrictions on what other people can do with their own property because computers are already property with all the rights attached as sandwiches.
The framers in fact discussed the purpose of copyright not to secure the owners natural rights alike property but in hopes that it would on net benefit society.
"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
The fact that it is inherently limited should give you the first clue that its not alike traditional property. If it was alike to a thing owned by you why would you by necessity be dispossessed of it. Originally in 14-28 years.
Jefferson spoke well and early against the very idea.
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
It is equally clear that IP isn't alike natural property and that we must necessarily examine the bargain to ensure that it is best from societies perspective. Since copyright is a gift not a natural right we needn't feel bad if for example we restore say its original term. It wouldn't be a taking but rather a restoration of balance in privileges granted.