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Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it to my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him? Would I not be mean in denying him? If I would, then would you not be immoral for coercing me to be mean to my friend? That, in essence, is the argument.

You could argue that your business model requires me, i.e. all your customers, to agree not to give their friends (or anyone else) copies. But the world does not owe you a living. If your business model requires you to ask people to behave badly towards their friends, then it is destroying the social fabric of society, and you could rightly be called immoral.

Anyway, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html if you truly want to read more.

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That would make perfect sense if software grew on trees.

In the real world in which we live, people have to work hard to create new things. There is no magic software fairy. Software is not a right like air, water or food or speech.

Remember, the world does not owe you free software. ("free" as in "free beer")

Well, first, there are those who argue (although I’m not sure they are right) that all software the world would need would be written by people in their spare time; even many large complex software pieces have been made this way. I’m not sure if this will work, though.

However, you are implying something more insidious: That one must forbid people to share software in order to make money writing it. This is obviously false, with many counterexamples. In particular, there is a company which is mostly writing the Gnu ADA compiler which is reportedly making money hand over fist. If one were to assume that this (or variants of it) is possible in all fields of software, then there is no good excuse for forbidding sharing of software, which does some demonstrable harm.

Let us talk when things like Google search and Watson are built from scratch for free. If sharing the source code for Google does no harm, why have they not done it?

Another radical example: Github. Why is the source for Github not open or free? Why are they not sharing that with us? Surely a company so invested in open (and to a large extent free) software must know better right?

I would argue that some free software projects can be compared to Google search and Watson.

Sharing the source to Google would be better for society, but a bit bad for Google, and since Google decides, they are deciding not to. The same goes for Github. It’s the collective action problem.

You have good intentions that are not realistic. Your model would work if everyone is selfless, honest and moral. Everyone has to be a perfect moral machine.

More concretely: free software always mimics commercial software badly after someone takes risk building it. No free software is comparable to Google or Watson in both technical capability and market results. They need 100s to 1000s of PhDs working full time. These PhDs have already slaved off in academia for years.

If software should not be treated as property, nothing else should be!

I think you are projecting; what is my "model"? Why would it fail?

> free software always mimics commercial software badly

One could argue against this, but let’s assume that it is true. Does this have anything to do with the necessity of allowing software makers to forbid the sharing of software? Are you arguing that it is impossible to make money with software which is not forbidden to share, when lots of people are doing it today?

Let’s say the world stopped allowing ideas and other non-rivalrous goods to be considered property. Would the world still need software? Yes. Would the world still need people to write software? Yes. Would the world be willing to pay people to write software they need? Obviously yes.

>One could argue against this, but let’s assume that it is true.

Hmm. It is true. Which free software are people using to search more than Google search? Which free software won Jeopardy?

> Are you arguing that it is impossible to make money with software which is not forbidden to share, when lots of people are doing it today?

I never said that. But forcing people to give up their software would result in a bleak Soviet like future for all of us.

>Let’s say the world stopped allowing ideas and other non-rivalrous goods to be considered property.

Then why should anything else be considered property? Are you not denying my right to enjoy land that you claim to own?

> forcing people to give up their software

Well, I never said anything about any such thing, so I’m not sure which strawman you are arguing with. If you think I implied it, please show it, and be more explicit in your reasoning.

> Then why should anything else be considered property?

Because those are rivalrous goods. There is a difference, and I would suggest you look it up before treating them all the same.

> Well, I never said anything about any such thing, so I’m not sure which strawman you are arguing with. If you think I implied it, please show it, and be more explicit in your reasoning.

What is the negation of the statement below?

> Does this have anything to do with the necessity of allowing software makers to forbid the sharing of software?

> Because those are rivalrous goods. There is a difference, and I would suggest you look it up before treating them all the same.

I know what rivalrous goods are. What on God's earth makes them so special and different from non-rivalrous goods?

You are not born with a piece of land attached to your neck. Only a piece paper with words and ideas says so. Who says one should be entitled to anything permanently? If you have a rivalrous good X, why not use it only for Y years and give it to the public for the common good?

The whole idea that you own a piece of a rivalrous good is an unnatural and a relatively new social construct just like intellectual property and ownership of ideas. It is a good solution when we are confronted with scarce resources (land, ideas, software).

Once again, there is no "rivalrous good fairy" granting them special rights. We decided to so as the other option was barbarianism and anarchy.

(Let’s not discuss rivalrous goods; they are not relevant to the question at hand.)

> What is the negation of the statement below?

I don’t understand what you mean. The text below is a question, not a statement.

Software is not a scarce resource; once it has been created, it can be easily defined as non-scarce. And before it has been created, if there is sufficient need for it, someone will pay to have it created.

> why not use it only for Y years and give it to the public for the common good?

Well, some people think this would be a good idea. Other people call those people “communists” and/or “anarchists”. So, the question is hotly debated, but also, for our purposes, irrelevant. We are debating the property or non-property status of ideas, information and software.

> I know what rivalrous goods are. What on God's earth makes them so special and different from non-rivalrous goods?

[…]

> We decided to [grant them special rights] as the other option was barbarianism and anarchy.

And this is exactly why rivalrous goods are different. We have (most of us) decided that we agree they need to be granted “property” status.

However, I do not think that defining software, ideas or other information as a non-ownable non-property would be “barbarianism and anarchy”. If you think so, please elaborate.

> Software is not a scarce resource; once it has been created, it can be easily defined as non-scarce. And before it has been created, if there is sufficient need for it, someone will pay to have it created.

Ummm...creation is not a trivial process. As I said before, there is no software fairy creating new software. Who decides what is the proper compensation for creation? The creators! Not some political goon.

> And this is exactly why rivalrous goods are different. We have (most of us) decided that we agree they need to be granted “property” status.

Um... software has the same legal rights as land. So there is no difference.

Just because X is different from Y in aspect A does not mean we should treat X differently in all aspects from Y.

>However, I do not think that defining software, ideas or other information as a non-ownable non-property would be “barbarianism and anarchy”. If you think so, please elaborate.

We won't devolve into anarchy, but we will devolve into Soviet-style bleakness.

The creators of software, ideas and information do decide the price of their services. The “political goons” decide, however, if the software, ideas and information itself, once created, should possess the status of property.

I am arguing the side that claims that these non-rivalrous goods like software, ideas and information should be changed to no longer be considered property and have owners. I have demonstrated that there are compelling arguments why their status as property has downsides, and why eliminating their being owned should, at least, have no appreciable downsides, and could potentially be a boon to all society. You, however, seem to argue that since software, ideas and information are legally considered property (at least some of them, some of the time, in different forms), they are property. But this would be assuming that the law is correct, and you can’t do that, since this is the question to be resolved.

I would still like to know why and how we will “devolve into Soviet-style bleakness” if software and ideas would no longer be granted property status. As a comparison, you could look at the clothing industry. There are no ownerships of patterns or designs there, but the industry continue to be needed and people are still paid to produce clothes. The odd cases of illegal copies you hear about are about trademark law, i.e. things fraudulently claiming to be a particular brand, but this is an issue of fraud and consumer protection against low-quality knockoffs, not a design or pattern property issue, since the designs of clothes are not property.

Nobody dies because their clothing did not have a particular pattern.

Yes? Isn’t that an argument for my side of this debate, rather than yours? Please elaborate.

What's your definition of 'need'?

If your belief system relies on not compensating other people's hard work, then it is destroying the social fabric of society.

By not acknowledging software as property, you are entrenching the power of those who control other forms of property. We can make software through our own efforts, but we cannot make land, or other natural resources.

You may wish to trade your time to provide support for free software to powerful corporations, but that seems like a grim vision of what's possible for humanity.

> What's your definition of 'need'?

You're being weird. I'm using the word in its normal sense.

> If your belief system relies on not compensating other people's hard work, then it is destroying the social fabric of society.

Work does not intrinsically need to be compensated. The world does not owe you a living. It is up to you to do work that actually deserves compensation. It will not do to complain that everyone is using your work in ways you did not intend; it is for you to find a business model which takes the actions of people into account.

It is also your duty as a member of society to engage in actions which does not, on the whole, damage society.

> By not acknowledging software as property, you are entrenching the power of those who control other forms of property

Perhaps. But this does not leave you destitute; property is not the only form of wealth. You have the ability to work, which you can sell. You do not need to go the roundabout way of working to create software, and then create this constructed form of property so you can sell this new form of “property”. You can just as easily sell your labor directly.

The normal sense of 'need' is that a person will die without something. You might be thiking of the word 'want'.

You keep saying 'the world does not owe you a living' as though it means something relevant to this discussion.

What gives you the right to decide what duties and actions damage society? I think you are damaging society by trying to destroy developers rights over the software they create.

The normal sense of ‘need’ is as in “I’m going shopping, I need milk.”.

What does and does not damage society is certainly open for discussion. But when you frame it as “developers’ rights over the software they create” you are presupposing the conclusion. Why should ideas and other non-rivalrous goods be considered property? If I “own” an idea that you have a copy of, why should this give me power over you?

So by need you mean "want".

I said nothing about ideas. That is a straw man.

I am not presupposing the conclusion. I recognize that developer's rights are artificial. I also recognize that money is artificial as are all property rights.

The reason software as a non-rivalrous good should be considered property is because we value the creative output of individuals, and recognize that it takes individual time and investment to add value to the world through this art. In doing so, we are valuing and incentivizing creativity and ingenuity rather than clock hours of work.

Price competition can take care of making the fruits of this creativity widely available to those who want it.

> we value the creative output of individuals

This all sounds good, but it is very theoretical. Let’s look at the more practical effects. As noted by many, the fact that the creative output of individuals can currently be owned has rather large drawbacks. So what do we gain to potentially offset these drawbacks? Note that these gains would have to be things we would actually lose if creative output of individuals would cease to have property status. Finally, are these gains large enough to overcome the drawbacks?

Furthermore, there are many who argue that, should the creative output of individuals cease to have limits on their dissemination and use, society would gain more than enough to offset any potential drawback of this. It could also be argued that the cost would be entirely transitional, i.e. people would have to get used to new business models and move to different ways of doing business, and there would be otherwise no actual continuous loss by making the creative output of individuals non-owned.

This isn't meaningful - you have simply affirmed the consequent: "As noted by many, the fact that the creative output of individuals can currently be owned has rather large drawbacks."

I know this is your belief, but you haven't offered any argument to support it.

You also dismissed what I said out of hand, with the phrase 'This all sounds good but it's theoretical', which is also false on the face of it since it is the current state of affairs and has produced tangible results.

I know what you believe. I just don't think you have a coherent argument for it.

There are large collections of drawbacks; books have been written about it. The two I can remember the name of are “Against Intellectual Monopoly” (http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...) and “The Case for Copyright Reform” (http://www.copyrightreform.eu/).

I would rather not argue specifics, but instead get you and people in general to understand what the argument is, and to get people to honestly investigate whether the cost is worth the drawbacks.

I called your reply “theoretical” because it talked about principles, not about what society would gain or lose with any available options, without which no cost-benefit analysis can be made. Are you wedded to the idea that the principle should outweigh all downsides in this case? How much would you be willing for this principle to cost society?

Have you not considered the possibility that many people here actually do already understand what the argument is, and have already investigated the costs and drawbacks for themselves?

If so, it seems as though you're simply hiding a position that you're not willing to defend.

I sincerely doubt they have done so with the same thoroughness as in the references I gave. Anyway, the original question (which started this thread) was by cscurmudgeon: “I am curious. Can you be more specific? If I am making my living writing software, and if you buy a copy of it and make it available to potential customers, why is it immoral to ask you not to do so?” I was not, I think, disingenuous in laying out the argument for people who, similarly to cscurmudgeon, had not grasped the argument for the other side.

> If I have a copy of some information or software, and I can easily copy it to my friend, and my friend needs it, why should I deny him?

How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license agreement?

Your friends "need" isn't necessarily a valid claim on the fruits of the software authors labor. (A "need" for software? Come on.) It might make a very compelling argument that the author should choose to gift a copy to your friend, or offer an educational version (as many do), but I can't see the logic that a need is a valid claim, moral or otherwise, on someone else's work.

> How about if you promised not to do that in your acceptance of the license agreement?

I could do that, and then the ethical burden would fall on me to motivate why society would benefit more from my use of the software than it would benefit everyone I would potentially deny to receive a copy of it.

But, the way you phrase it (“claim on the fruits of the software authors labor”) presupposes that it is property, and a rivalrous one at that. However, software is a non-rivalrous good, and whether it should be considered property is the question we are debating.

It's a club good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good).

A club good is simply an excludable non-rivalrous good. In this Internet age it is increasingly hard to maintain the illusion of the excludability of bits.

It is relatively effective. Most people don't pirate things because it's illegal. Especially corporations are less likely to pirate software because of the serious legal consequences.

Note that I said bits, not only software. Most everyone has their music collection. Also, in regards to software, show me an average person who hasn’t had a pirated version of, say, Photoshop or MS Office. Even in business office settings it is, I am given to understand, very common.

Also, does a mere legal barrier suffice to make something an excludable good? Could you turn, for example, the observing of the Statue of Liberty into an excludable good merely by passing a law mandating that only those allowed may observe it?

Lets put this into concrete examples. Let say there is a kid who want to learn physics, and I got study software that the child needs. However, the license agreement say I can't. The child could maybe, in theory, reconstruct the necessary experiments or read about them in the library.

Or let say that a cab driver see a child who missed the buss back home. However, the cab drivers contract says he is not allowed to pick up passages who can't pay. Without the drive back home, the child need to walk several miles.

This is what people call moral dilemmas. To help a child, or to follow the contract.

You could buy a second copy of the software for the child. You saw enough value in it to consider letting them use it and you saw enough value to buy it for yourself. Either you consider the asking price fair for what it delivers or you don't. If you don't think it's a fair price then you can either write something yourself for them or spend your own time helping them learn.

There's no dilemma preventing you from helping the child.

So someone should go to university and study to become a programmer, and in several years into the future when the child has grown up, you might be able to reproduce the program? Could you provide a more straw'ish argument?

It is possible that you can spend money to buy a new copy, in the same way that the cab driver could "pay" his employer the drive the child home. However, anyone who sees the child could also spend the money for the cab. Is the argument here that they are all equally moral bankrupt when they child end up walking all those miles home? Does it matter that the cab driver was driving in that direction anyway?

Many people around the world can say that they are helping children to become the best they can be. Someone who refuse sharing can not. Which one are you?

> You could buy a second copy of the software for the child.

This is a “let them eat cake” response. All problems could be solved if one assumes endless resources.

Also, you are assuming the software is still for sale. Perhaps it never was on sale; perhaps it’s a student-only edition provided by an institution. The point is: There are two choices: Obey the restriction the owner has decided and deny your help, or help the child and break your promise to obey the restrictions.

The World. It doesn't work that way and neither does the vast majority of commercial software despite what you "want".

Your Words. They do not make sense and you are quoting things I did not write despite what you “believe”.

The world wouldn't magically be better off without copyright, in fact it would be much worse as there would be little investment in producing it. Bill Gates wrote software and other people voluntarily chose to use it instead of something free. If you can do a better job for free then nothing is preventing you.

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