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Comment by Yaa101 | Hacker News Reader

To steal somebodies culture (like in recording it and putting it in a vault while aserting copyrights) is as bad as stealing ones land, maybe you should debate this with victims of cultural theft.

Monopolies, which are constructs in law to favor friends of rulers, are never morally justifiable.

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You're using the word "culture" as a shibboleth for a whole package of entitlements that people on message boards tend to believe in, and not in its conventional sense. Simply labeling my work as "cultural" does not entitle the world to access that work for free; it's my work.

Ironically, you play the opposite semantic game with the word "monopoly", whose technical meaning has already been clearly fleshed out upthread. If all "monopolies" are immoral, then you don't believe in property. Really, though, you're trying to repurpose that word for emotional impact instead of understanding; you mean it as "property rights asserted by people we don't like."

No I do not, I do not feel entiteled to anything and neither should you, while you have the right to have a go to try earning money with your works it does not say you have the automatic right to get that money just because it is your works. You do not have the obligation to share your work with the world, neither do I, still I do share some programs with the world and it is my own choise to do this for free. But I do not have the feling that the world owes me something just because I made some stuff, I do not share all my work for free, some of it I try and make money with with different grades of success but enough to be able to debate with you at this forum. I think you look too narrow at what culture is and I think you thought is too much on ownership and how property is owned by a few. Some things are owned by large groups of people, things like culture. And yes, monopolies (the right of a few or a single entity at cost of the rest of society) are a awful legal construct which has nothing to do with natural rights. Last but not least, I do not know your work and probably it isn worth to know if I see what kind of mind created that work. Good luck with earning your money, if other people grant you that.

The only "natural right" you have is which of your appendages the bear gets to eat first. If you're awake when it catches you.

You also have freedom of scream.

Is there a distinction between sharing among peers and using other peoples work for your own profit?

Is it possible to make a difference how copyright laws are applied to personal/private use and for organizations/corporations?

How is software and "culture" as in music/movies different?

If any, should we make that those distinctions visible in IP-laws?

If you truly want to keep your intellectual work truly and solely to yourself that's fine, just keep it in your head or on secured personal devices.

Once you have shared the work it is not solely yours, others have limited claims on it too. That doesn't mean some exclusive controls on it for a limited time are not a valid balancing of the competing claims of the producer and the recipients of your cultural production.

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