That may be a great philosophical argument, but in the eyes of the law (which is what we're discussing here), IA was giving away someone else's property, so it really can't be considered a charitable act.

Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable?

> That may be a great philosophical argument, but in the eyes of the law (which is what we're discussing here), IA was giving away someone else's property, so it really can't be considered a charitable act.

Internet Archive is a nonprofit with a philosophical mission. I don't agree with them all the time, but I view that their responsibility is to act primarily in accordance with their values. Unfortunately, they ended up taking on powers that they may not be able to handle, but I believe that they are in the right and the publishers are in the wrong, which is a more important conversation to me than whether their decision was strategically prudent (probably it was not).

> Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable?

All software that I have worked on outside of my job is free and open source, so I would. I believe that it should be mandated by law that all non-trivial software be free and open source. To qualify this, I wouldn't do this on an individual level without your consent if, say, you were a small creator and you depended upon licenses for your livelihood. But small creators are not the plantiffs in this case, nor the people who primarily benefit from strict intellectual property laws -- massive publishing companies are.

You two are arguing at odds with each other. You're talking about how things are and they're talking about how they think things should be.

> Knowledge and culture is not anyone’s property. It is the collective work of all of humanity and ought to be treated as such.

This is a specious ideology without a mechanism to reward creators. At the moment that mechanism is money, either through sales, or for a rare few patronage. Without reward, creation is limited to the otherwise idle, and the collected work of all humanity lessened.

Personally I advocate the right to buy at a reasonable cost (as reasoned by society). Once a reproducible work is released to the public, you can't refuse my payment for it.

Reward doesn’t have to take the form of intellectual property. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_...

Intellectual property benefits publishers, not creators.

The most valuable possession people have is time and attention. Producing works of knowledge and culture involves people giving up their time and attention to produce something. If they have done so, they deserve to have ownership of it.

As Abraham Lincoln said “ That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. “

Whenever, you appropriate for yourself the fruits of other people’s toil, you are sowing seeds of tyranny.

> The most valuable possession people have is time and attention. Producing works of knowledge and culture involves people giving up their time and attention to produce something. If they have done so, they deserve to have ownership of it.

They deserve to be paid (eg, by a University), but they do not deserve ownership in terms of exclusive rights to its use. Can you imagine how far back science would be held if any applications of Newton or Einstein’s work required royalties to their estate? Are suggesting that the fact that they aren’t is tyranny?