It is special, because when you steal a physical thing, the owner doesn't have that physical thing anymore. If you pirate something that you weren't gonna buy anyways, the owner still has the digital file in the exact same way they had it before you pirated. I cannot even call pirating "stealing" in good conscious tbh.

Legally, copyright infringement (and IP infringement in general) is treated more like trespassing than theft, in that you may be infringing on the owners enjoyments, rather than depriving them of property.

I would if I could do it from home with zero chance of getting caught and shop wouldn't loose the thing I stole.

If you say you wouldn't I think you are lying, mostly to yourself.

As an inveterate and unrepentant pirate, I can tell you that I would not. It is depriving someone else who deserves a thing just as much as I do. I am not paying my grocer for today's goods that I buy, I'm paying him to keep bringing goods in and having stocked shelves for myself and others. I have no such compunction toward any particular artist in any medium. If they keep creating stuff I like, good on them. If they do not, I'm totally unconcerned; because there will be others along to create something new.

This is a brutal world viewpoint

Stealing implies deprivation, not duplication. Digital copying is entirely the latter. And very few physical goods are part and parcel to culture - which should be free in any event. We are losing our ability to create mythology, because it's all being crafted for money and shoved out from corporations. Consider the case of Don Quixote - the author felt he had to write a sequel and a "closing" of the story because so many others wrote their own stories of the Man of La Mancha. Bacon pirated from Goethe, Shakespeare from a score of others. Without free duplication and access to media, there is no common conversation - we'd each be trapped in our paywalls. I refuse to accept that; and I believe that culture is more important than money ever will be. A person who creates a seminal work that gets pirated far and wide would be better off accepting it and creating another work to make something off. Either that or having a real living while he creates. The idea of "artist" as a career, especially a prestigious and high-paying career, is one of many missteps of our modern world.

> The idea of "artist" as a career, especially a prestigious and high-paying career, is one of many missteps of our modern world.

So you don't think there is anyone who is accomplished enough at being an artist that they should be able to make it a profession?

I want to experience the best artists being able to spend the time doing the best work they can possibly do, not a generation of office workers who can only afford to produce mediocre art for a maximum of a couple of hours per day, like me. :(

We need to try some different economic models for information. Is there any reason to think that treating it as private property, with artificial scarcity, is the only way that things can be organized? The laws of physics don't require it.

I agree in principle, but what are some other economic models that can work in the real world? Artists need to pay their bills, so the way I see it, they need to be paid by some mechanism.

Government funding. Governments already fund arts and science in many countries. The copyright system is propped up by government involvement anyway.

You want the government to decide what arts get funded?

I'll take the world where I can direct my funds to the projects I like, thanks. The price mechanism strictly dominates central planning in terms of welfare generation. This has been proven over and over again.

That's where the funding would come from, how it would be allocated is also a big question. If you want to apply the price mechanism to information, then you also accept copyright, artificial scarcity, and the enforcement mechanisms that go with it.

I'm more than willing to accept that until someone comes up with a better solution. I think it extremely unlikely that a centrally planned solution will ever be superior.

> I'll take the world where I can direct my funds to the projects I like, thanks.

Sure. And the government decides how many funds you direct to them to prevent freeloading. Basically Flattr, but mandatory.

> The price mechanism strictly dominates central planning in terms of welfare generation. This has been proven over and over again.

Interesting. Can you direct me to that proof? I'd love to see the math. I do know that there is empirical evidence that a dictatorship making 4 year plans does not generate much welfare if it has, at best, 1980s computing power available that is not sufficient to finish even a simplified plan within 4 years.

So you really shouldn't put people in charge whose ideology revolves around creating a planned economy as opposed to something reasonable like freedom, solidarity and democracy (including public ownership of the means of production).

> Sure. And the government decides how many funds you direct to them to prevent freeloading. Basically Flattr, but mandatory.

Uhhh got it, so the government decides how much of my money I need to direct to arts/digital goods? I have no choice in that? You want to replace a world where I can freely allocate my capital to goods that are artificially scarce (presumably you are morally opposed to this enforcement) with one where I'm forced to allocate my capital goods to $0 marginal cost goods (you aren't opposed to this enforcement, though?). I'll take the one where I have fuller choice if in either circumstance I lose some freedom. This also doesn't address issues that would certainly arise from the cost of enforcement, the likelihood of fraud, etc. and the relative cost between that and what we have today.

You should take a basic economics class if you want to fully understand how markets succeed vs centrally planned mechanisms.

However, the basics would be the following:

1) Every individual is unique and has unique preferences.

2) These preferences are private and non-discoverable by external parties but are well-known, to a point, to the individual. (Proof: see the INCREDIBLY NARROW worlds of recommendation systems where even though Netflix or Amazon or Google have massive amounts of information about your historical preferences in VERY NARROW circumstances, they still fail to provide truly great recommendations)

3) Since a central planning entity cannot know every individual's preferences but every individual can (think of market economies as distributed systems), overall welfare is maximized by individuals autonomously and freely allocating their personal capital to the goods/services/etc. that they see fit.

4) As more and more individuals bid with their capital, up to the point of negative returns for them, for goods/services/etc., producers react to produce more of these, and ideally at lower costs and higher quantities to maximize their gains and demand, in order to capture more capital for them to purchase their preferences with. This is the price mechanism and it CANNOT be replicated centrally given the unknowability of a central entity to understand preferences. NO AMOUNT of today's computing power could possibly come close. Think about how much compute goes into the shitty recommendations you get from Google/NFLX/et al. and for how narrow that realm is. You want production to be based on something like that?

Now, there are failures of market mechanisms. What happens when there are external social costs (ie C02 production from fossil fuels), or the tragedies of the commons, etc. that require central intervention to the best of its ability. Hence IP/Copyright where in a world where without it, creators have no reasonable means of capturing returns on their efforts, we must implement property rights. There is of course a great argument for much better refinement of IP laws, but they are not arguments against them.

I think the biggest problem with the information-as-property model is that it only works if its vigorously enforced world-wide. There's little or no room for even a single country to experiment with a copyright-free system. They'll be pounded into submission with the threat of trade tariffs. Even "communist" states like North Korea have signed up to the copyright system.

I think this also leaves the system somewhat unstable; all it needs is a rogue government in some place like Iceland and the likes of sci—hub and pirate bay will have a safe haven. If one country gets away with it, others would probably jump on the bandwagon, because they have little to gain by sending money to rich countries for information they could download for free.

I don't think North Korea is the best example. I can't think of a country less dedicated to the free flow of information.

> Uhhh got it, so the government decides how much of my money I need to direct to arts/digital goods?

Yes. It's not too different from taxes, but you have more choice. We could also include other projects like research, public parks, etc. The point is not to centralize control but to avoid artificial and unnecessary scarcity.

> You want to replace a world where I can freely allocate my capital to goods that are artificially scarce [...] with one where I'm forced to allocate my capital goods to $0 marginal cost goods (you aren't opposed to this enforcement, though?).

Yes, I want to replace a world where things are artificially scarce with one where they are not.

> presumably you are morally opposed to this enforcement

It's a question of efficiency. Limiting access to goods with zero marginal cost is just a waste.

But yes, I'm morally opposed to reducing the general welfare.

> I'll take the one where I have fuller choice if in either circumstance I lose some freedom.

Then you should be in favor of removing artificial scarcity. It removes people's freedom to use media for no good reason. Of course, if you're wealthy enough that this does not restrict you, you may benefit. But don't forget that in that case, you defend your privileges at the expense of others' freedom.

> This also doesn't address issues that would certainly arise from the cost of enforcement, the likelihood of fraud, etc.

Sorry for not writing a fully fleshed out bill ready to be passed into law.

> You should take a basic economics class if you want to fully understand how markets succeed vs centrally planned mechanisms.

No thanks, I already know the crude model of the economy a basic economics class teaches.

> 1) Every individual is unique and has unique preferences.

> 2) These preferences are private and non-discoverable by external parties but are well-known, to a point, to the individual.

The need of companies for input products, however, is discoverable.

> Proof

No, evidence. This isn't math.

> 3) Since a central planning entity cannot know every individual's preferences

Correct.

> but every individual can

I don't think a psychologist would agree with that statement. But there are good reasons to pretend it's true anyway.

> (think of market economies as distributed systems), overall welfare is maximized by individuals autonomously and freely allocating their personal capital to the goods/services/etc. that they see fit.

Only assuming everyone has the same income or at least the same earning power (working less in exchange for earning less is a valid choice). Otherwise, some peoples' welfare is weighted higher than others'.

> 4) As more and more individuals bid with their capital, up to the point of negative returns for them, for goods/services/etc., producers react to produce more of these,

Of course. If people buy more or less of something than was predicted, you have to change the plan. Central planning can reduce this issue compared to a pile of uncoordinated competing capitalists, but it cannot eliminate it.

That's a problem if calculating a plan takes years. With today's technology, it isn't.

> Think about how much compute goes into the shitty recommendations you get from Google/NFLX/et al. and for how narrow that realm is.

Incompetence isn't the only reason why those recommendations are so shitty. Netflix, at least, tries to push their "originals" and other films and series that are cheap for them. They also try to hide how limited their catalog is, due to intellectual property. They use DRM because their aim is not to provide a good service, but to make a profit. By using DRM they force you to use their client. Capitalism is actually reducing choice and competition here.

it's just the consumer's version of Hollywood Accounting: sorry, but there's just no money left to pay you :(