In the name of that ideal, would you be willing for your work to be given away for free and for your income to vanish?
When a fence is built around the apple tree, it is a restriction on the ability of the apple tree to spread its seeds and on those that desire the apples, both.
I don’t personally have a strong stance on this particular issue, but perhaps this analogy will help you understand the view of people who believe that knowledge should be free.
But I think it is very convenient that it applies to the work these people want to consume (which should be free), and not to the work they perform (which should be paid).
Why should the software engineer be paid but the author not? Why is the written word information but not the code?
I would trust the motives more if there was a general coherence to it all, beyond the consumption of media. Information comes in many forms.
There’s a very big Open Source / Free as in Freedom / AND Free as in Beer contingent on HN.
For example, the Lawyer example is used often - once the lawyer makes the argument, it's in the public domain and can be used by others, but you still pay the lawyer to compose the argument. There are also models where the durable software artifacts are free, but you pay people to support your use of them. Then there are the older models that used to be used a lot in the music and art world. A wealthy benefactor (or in this day and age, crowd) pays for a trusted artist / musican / architect / coder to create something, both for their enjoyment but also for their fame and renown.
The moment my work (I assume you mean work as in "labor") becomes that easy to replicate, it will become worthless. But there are certain laws of physics which make it quite improbable to happen.
In the world of IP and copyright law, the ownership rights that go with owning a piece of media with particular patterns are restricted. You are not allowed to dispose of the patterns on a DVD as you might wish despite supposedly 'owning' it. This is clearly a difference from previously understood models of what ownership was.
> The ordinary subjects of property are well known, and easily conceived . . . But property, when applied to ideas, or literary and intellectual compositions, is perfectly new and surprising . . . by far the most comprehensive denomination of it would be a property in nonsense - Lord Gardenston 1773
"Because copying information from one computer to another costs nothing (except for the electricity and internet access). Any attempt to restrict that capability is restricting your freedom."
Why books, and not his work?
I don't think anyone is arguing that everyone must make all digital information freely available to everyone else. Nobody is saying that books must be provided for free. The argument is that nobody should be restricted from sharing their data if that's what they want to do. That will naturally result in most widely shared digital files being made available for free, but it's because those with them exercised a right to share rather than because anyone was compelled to do anything.
Don't you want to restrict people from sharing their files - even if that's what they want to do - when those files are things like your banking documents or medical records?
Yeah, I'm not strongly arguing for this view, merely arguing that it genuinely does represent a restriction on freedom (sometimes restrictions on freedom are sensible, although in this case I think it'd be better to try to find other ways to solve the problems of recompensing creators).
If I have to take a stance on it, I'd probably say that people sharing personal and private information on me without my permission (and by the way credit agencies, governments, friends with facebook accounts and advertising companies do in fact do this) should be treated as a separate issue, and considered much more under laws against harassment or libel (which are themselves restrictions on freedom of speech too!) or perhaps breach of contract.
I'm not even sure banking documents or medical records actually fall under copyright - and if they do, I don't think the copyright belongs to the patient, so I don't think it's copyright that is used in these cases anyway.
Freedom to copy != obligation to copy.
Your arguments are erroneous, at best.
So if I get hold of your files somehow I have the freedom to copy, right?
If I had shared a file with you, however, then you should feel free to share it with others as much as you'd like.
No. Choosing to price something you own beyond its marginal cost of delivery is not a restriction on freedom.
What is a restriction on freedom is not allowing others to take something they have (a collection of words / pattern of bits / a SD card / a hard disk) and choose to give that away to others. The fact that in an internet-connected world allowing that will result in most people being able to acquire most files for no more than their marginal cost of delivery is a result of freedom, not a restriction on it.
It seems extremely unlikely that you can keep the price on any widely distributed collection of bits much above 0 for an appreciable length of time without governments intervening to remove that freedom of sharing and copying from people.
And it becomes very obvious that if people can share stuff for free, someone somewhere will. That combination of freedom to share speech and ability to do so at 0 marginal cost results in books being shared for no cost.
Did you have the choice in giving your work away or was it made for you?