Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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I drive my car about twice a month, never on weekdays. If someone stole my car on Monday, they could use it all week and if they returned it on Friday with a tank of gas and $0.50 per mile for wear and tear, I'd be no worse off. Yet, that would still be illegal. But I would be deprived of the opportunity to rent my car to that person for a fee of my choosing. Similarly, I'm no worse off if someone squats on land I never use, or sneaks into my theater to watch a movie when half the seats are empty. But I am deprived of the opportunity to rent that land to the squatter, or sell a ticket to the movie watcher.

Property rights don't just grant you the right not to be made worse off, they grant you the exclusive right to profit from something.

Now, whether non-violent violations of property rights should be punished by jail time is a separate issue.

If we're going to suggest that code and physical property are the same, then I would ask you to touch code for me.

If you can do that I'm prepared to give code all the same rights as traditional property. If you can't then you might consider that physical goods and intellectual ones aren't the same and MAYBE different rules should apply.

May I access your bank account and transfer some untouchable numbers to mine?

Those numbers are representative of real actual things.

What real actual things is the code representative of?

Profits, which are as real as your money, because they are both money.

Man that is one tortured definition. The mental gymnastics. Impressive!

Are you claiming that someone copying proprietary trading software cannot lead to a loss of profits?

It's necessary but not sufficient for a loss of profits.

Further I was talking about code in general. To have separate laws or treatment of "financial" code versus "regular" code would be pretty silly. How would you even draw the line between the two?

You must be very good at yoga because that's a huge stretch. Property and intellectual property are completely different things to the point that intellectual property is a misnomer.

The money in your bank account is an IOU. It doesn't represent physical money at all.

Technically you're right of course. But functionally there's no difference. I go to the bank and ask for $1000 and they give me the cash and deduct the balance from my account. What their reserve ratio is immaterial most of the time. Except during crises and bank runs.

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