Copyright
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.To keep someone from copying your work you have to infringe on the private property of that person by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned copying medium to instantiate a certain pattern.
‘To stop someone from murdering you you have to infringe on his private property by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned gun to shoot you’ How is that different?
Maybe? Kinda? Not sure.
You don't get to use your knife to aggress on others, that much is clear. So perhaps this can be understood as a right of others to do certain things with your property.
So… the law extending to others’ property is nothing new and not totalitarian in and of itself.
Just intuitively, I feel like there's a difference between forcing others not to force you, and forcing others not to copy you. I feel like defending against others using your scarce means towards their ends is just, while defending against others using non-scarce means towards their end is wicked. Since I impose no opportunity cost on someone by copying information, they have no claim on my scarce means as recompense. The copy-ability of information gives us this nice non-zero-sum situation where we can have our cake and eat it too because we don't have to economize on non-scarce things.
Correction: In some sense copying information does impose a cost, but I think of that cost more akin to the cost imposed on an incumbent producer by his competing alternatives in a free market.
When I distribute Harry Potter for free, I am simply offering better terms for access to the information than JK Rowling, so in a free market I should be the one that ends up distributing because I solve the same problem at a lower price.
This duplicate is symptomatic of a larger and common issue of just reverting back to one’s previous arguments when one hasn’t fully processed the counterarguments. Veritula helps you avoid doing that because you can just look up each idea’s ‘truth status’. If it has outstanding criticisms, you don’t invoke it again. You either save it first or work on something else.
‘When I distribute other people’s bicycles for free, I am simply offering better terms for access to bicycles than the stores that sell them, so in a free market I should be the one that ends up distributing because I solve the same problem at a lower price.’ 🤡
I should be clear though that it is only right for the law to interfere with property to protect others’ rights. It’s not right for the law to confiscate your money to collect taxes, say.