Everyone arguing that itās not stealing is making the claim that it has no value.
Are you trying to conflate āvalueā with āextractive market valueā? There are lots of things that have innate value but have no or very little market value.
Why does it matter? I would consider it moral and ethical but have no care whether itās a legal one.
It matters if anyone cares to understand what youāre actually asserting, since youāve again claimed āI am only arguing against the mischaracterization and dishonesty of claiming that it is not stealingā. How can anyone understand what you mean without knowing what you take āstealingā to mean, and why it matters?
Most people here would argue that a system that relies on exclusive ownership of ideas/digitally reproducible data in order to support those who do that labor (that we all benefit from) is one that is broken. In which case āstealingā would be misplacing both to whom the harm being done and the party doing the harm, because it isnāt the fault of the artist or the consumer that the system withholds the means of living from those who are unable to justify their existence through labor.
Thatās all irrelevant. Iām not making some hypothetical point. Whether you agree with āthe systemā or not, it is the system within which we live and operate and within which people need to make a living. It doesnāt matter whose fault it is. What matters is that someone is being deprived of something by someone who found value in a thing that the person created. If we accept that and attempt to justify as anything other than theft, then those people will cease to create themselves or will have to work further into the system that youāre arguing against as they will be unable to sustain themselves by creating things within that system.
If you want people to make more of the things you like, you have to pay them for those things. All the straw man arguments about DRM and corporations that attempt to justify piracy only further reinforce the current system rather than some imagined system.
Stealing has a definition. It means that youāre taking something from someone. If you canāt understand āstealingā in its most basic form, then thereās no point in having a further discussion with you because youāre only pretending not to understand to justify behavior that benefits you.
āPiracy is stealingā certainly seems to be a statement of fault, doesnāt it?
What matters is that someone is being deprived of something by someone who found value in a thing that the person created.
No, that someone is being deprived of something in the first instance by being made to justify their existence through their labor. That someone isnāt willing to pay for that labor is only depriving them in the second instance, and there are innumerable examples where essential labor is uncompensated in our market system.
If you want people to make more of the things you like, you have to pay them for those things.
That is not a given. I happen to think that by returning the time that was stolen from us (or some portion thereof) by coercing us into labor, we can all be free to create what we want. Forcing art to abide by the rules of the free market only serves to corrupt it, not enable it to sustain itself.
Stealing has a definition. It means that youāre taking something from someone.
Stealing actually has a bunch of definitions, and most of them depend upon the abstract concept of āpropertyā.
thereās no point in having a further discussion with you because youāre only pretending not to understand to justify behavior that benefits you.
I was saying that it doesnāt matter whose fault it is to your assertion that āitās not the creators or the consumersā fault. Piracy does have a person thatās at fault and, logically, itās the person getting something for free that is not being offered for free.
Iām not talking about anyone justifying their existence through labor. Youāre arguing a straw man. Iām stating that creators make something with the intent to get paid for that thing. Their motivation for why theyāre doing so (whether itās to participate in the system, ājustify their existenceā, personal gratification, or otherwise) is irrelevant to the argument being made. Having numerable instances where people are uncompensated doesnāt justify those situations anymore than it justifies this one.
Everything else you said about artists is all well and good and entirely meaningless to the people who canāt afford to pay their bills because they have no choice but to live within the market that they do. Of course Iād be happy if we lived in a Star Trekian utopia where money doesnāt matter anymore but we donāt and pirating content that people make isnāt going to change that.
All Iām arguing is that itās dishonest to suggest that piracy is not stealing when the entire proposition of piracy is an entitlement to be able to consume something without paying for it. That is stealing by any stretch of the imagination. Whether youāre watching a movie without paying for it, using a website that someone built for you that you didnāt pay for, or having sex with a prostitute who you refuse to payā¦ itās all stealing.
Iām not talking about anyone justifying their existence through labor. Youāre arguing a straw man. Iām stating that creators make something with the intent to get paid for that thing. Their motivation for why theyāre doing so (whether itās to participate in the system, ājustify their existenceā, personal gratification, or otherwise) is irrelevant to the argument being made. Having numerable instances where people are uncompensated doesnāt justify those situations anymore than it justifies this one.
Everything else you said about artists is all well and good and entirely meaningless to the people who canāt afford to pay their bills because they have no choice but to live within the market that they do.
Except it isnāt, because youāre arguing they deserve to be paid because otherwise they canāt afford to pay their bills. Youāve made it explicitly relevant.
All Iām arguing is that itās dishonest to suggest that piracy is not stealing when the entire proposition of piracy is an entitlement to be able to consume something without paying for it.
And iām saying itās dishonest to suggest that piracy is stealing when the entire proposition of digital copyright is an entitlement to be able to extract currency from something thatās infinitely reproducible by denying access to it.
That is stealing by any stretch of the imagination. Whether youāre watching a movie without paying for it, using a website that someone built for you that you didnāt pay for, or having sex with a prostitute who you refuse to payā¦ itās all stealing.
Where to start with this oneā¦
āwatching a movie without paying for itā: like renting a movie from a library? sharing a dvd with a friend? time and format-shifting a dvd youāve bought? plenty of legal examples here that are inconsistent with what youāre saying
āusing a website that someone built for you that you didnāt pay forā: this is a weird one, since āusing a website that someone built without paying for itā is exactly how the internet works nowā¦ Unless you mean stiffing a contractor you had an agreement with?
āhaving sex with a prostitute who you refuse to payā: another weird and grotesque exampleā¦ but I think conceptually the same as the website example? Stiffing a contractor?
āThat is stealing by any stretch of the imaginationā: and it is quite a stretch (youāve misused this turn-of-phrase)
No, thatās not what Iām arguing. Iām arguing that they deserve to be paid because theyāre asking to be paid for their work rather than giving it away for free. Their reasons for wanting to get paid are irrelevant. They are not offering the product of their labor for free. Full stop. Why theyāre doing that doesnāt matter.
the entire proposition of digital copyright is an entitlement to be able to extract currency from something thatās infinitely reproducible by denying access to it.
Iām not talking about copyright, though! Copyright is a legal concept defined by lawmakers. Iām not focusing on the legality of piracy at all. I donāt care if itās legal or not and I donāt care about the copyright. Iām simply arguing that people create things and expect to get paid for them. They donāt create them to give them away for free unless theyāve explicitly decided to do that.
watching a movie without paying for itā: like renting a movie from a library? sharing a dvd with a friend? time and format-shifting a dvd youāve bought? plenty of legal examples here that are inconsistent with what youāre saying
watching a movie without paying for itā: like renting a movie from a library? sharing a dvd with a friend? time and format-shifting a dvd youāve bought? plenty of legal examples here that are inconsistent with what youāre saying
Libraries have to get permission from creators to carry intangible goods. Libraries do not and cannot just buy media and offer it for consumption without permission, especially for digital media that is intangible. Sharing a DVD with a friend is a tangible good and therefore has physical limitations that intangible media does not so it is not the same. And, again, Iām not arguing about the legal implications of any of this so whether or not other things are legal or not is irrelevant.
āusing a website that someone built for you that you didnāt pay forā: this is a weird one, since āusing a website that someone built without paying for itā is exactly how the internet works nowā¦ Unless you mean stiffing a contractor you had an agreement with?
Stiffing a contractor is exactly what I mean. The person that created your website. The person that created the intangible good that you seem to be arguing is just fine to copy indefinitely without paying that person for their time (again, unless theyāve explicitly granted its free use).
āhaving sex with a prostitute who you refuse to payā: another weird and grotesque exampleā¦ but I think conceptually the same as the website example? Stiffing a contractor?
Why is that a weird and/or grotesque example? Sex workers are people and provide a service. So, yesā¦stiffing a contractor.
āThat is stealing by any stretch of the imaginationā: and it is quite a stretch (youāve misused this turn-of-phrase)
Ok? I donāt think I did but does that really matter? The point still stands whether I used the idiom correctly or not.
theyāre asking to be paid for their work rather than giving it away for free
If I spend months intricately painting my car with the expectation of being paid, am i justified in asking to be paid for you looking at it? Am I justified in accusing you of theft if you take a picture of it as I drive by? If you share it with all your friends? If I post an elaborate tiktok and say, āif you viewed this please pay me $5ā, can I accuse you of theft if you donāt?
At what point does a desire to be paid for creative work become an obligation on the part of those who consume it? By what natural law is a creator granted exclusive right to the consumption and distribution of that intangible work?
Them expecting to be paid has no bearing on the moral or ethical obligation for me to do so. Theyāre asking to be paid for something that is by nature freely available and infinitely sharable. That doesnāt make something theft, especially not legally (which I now understand is not your point)
The most you could argue is for a social obligation (i.e. you ought to pay for things you benefit from), but that wouldnāt amount to fucking theft. If thatās the point youāre making, then itās disingenuous to refer to piracy as stealing.
And, again, Iām not arguing about the legal implications of any of this so whether or not other things are legal or not is irrelevant.
Great, that simplifies things.
Stiffing a contractor is exactly what I mean. The person that created your website. The person that created the intangible good that you seem to be arguing is just fine to copy indefinitely without paying that person for their time (again, unless theyāve explicitly granted its free use).
Youāre talking about selling labor under contract, not consuming or sharing an intangible good freely. By the quote I shared, an idea [or intangible work] is exclusively yours until you decide to divulge it. Once you share it, it is no longer yours. A better example is if I pay you for your time to make me a website, and then someone else copies the HTML from the site after I publish it (as with most piracy, the person youāre hurting isnāt the creator but the IP owner, which is usually not the creator). Your time has been paid for already, and trying to limit access to that work after the fact is simply an abuse of some abstract ownership over something that canāt really be stolen. Anyone is free to support the work they enjoy, but saying that itās an ethical obligation that amounts to theft if ignored is simply not a given.
Itās the same with the sex worker, except thereās no intangible product of the work a prostitute does thatās infinitely reproducibleā¦ that example seems to have been included specifically for the emotional weight that work elicits, since it doesnāt appear to be relevant to your point.
The problem is that in our current system, absent being paid for your labor or exclusive ownership to goods or capital needed by others, you canāt sustain yourself. Thatās a relevant condition to what I think about someone copying the work I produce, not an irrelevant deflection. Additionally, the motivation to do the work changes how someone might feel about it being shared: if you only have to do work you like to do and believe in, and not for any financial obligation, doesnāt it change the emotional appeal youāre making from the point of view of the creator? And the collective benefit for making those creations freely available would outweigh any concern about obligatory compensation or abstract ownership.
Absent those conditions, the ethical conclusion youāre trying to make wouldnāt be applicable by any stretch of the imagination.
If I spend months intricately painting my car with the expectation of being paid
You cannot force someone to pay for something that is displayed in public. If you took that car that you intricately painted and locked it in a garage and charged an admission fee to look at it, then, yes, you are justified. If you are driving it in public, everything else about what you say is invalidated - no, you are not justified in accusing someone of theft regardless of what happens after that. You gave up the right to that when you drove it publicly.
At what point does a desire to be paid for creative work become an obligation on the part of those who consume it?
At the point of its creation. Otherwise, youāre making the argument that everyone is entitled to anything anyone creates from the moment itās created.
Theyāre asking to be paid for something that is by nature freely available and infinitely sharable.
This is the flaw in this argument. It is not freely available unless the creator is giving it to people freely. Most creators who make their content do not give it away freely.
Youāre talking about selling labor under contract, not consuming or sharing an intangible good freely. By the quote I shared, an idea [or intangible work] is exclusively yours until you decide to divulge it. Once you share it, it is no longer yours.
Then, to be clear, youāre ok with someone stealing the work someone else made instead of paying you to do it at your job? If youāre a programmer, youāre ok with your boss just stealing someone elseās work if it does the job youāre being asked to do?
thereās no intangible product of the work a prostitute does
This is not true. The prostitute loses nothing that he/she had when they started the work and can continue to provide that same product to any number of people after they are done providing it to you. To borrow from your descriptions of pirated content, her product is infinitely reproducible and freely available (so long as sheās been paid for it, right?).
The problem is that in our current system
ā¦and then you continue to make a claim for a situation that is not possible in our current system which makes it irrelevant.
Yes, in a fantasy Star Trekian utopia where money doesnāt matter and people donāt need money to survive, I would love for creators to make art just because thatās what theyāre passionate about. Iām not arguing that fantasy, Iām arguing reality.
At the point of its creation. Otherwise, youāre making the argument that everyone is entitled to anything anyone creates from the moment itās created.
Nope, iām making the argument that ownership ends when a work is shared publicly, not when itās created.
This is the flaw in this argument. It is not freely available unless the creator is giving it to people freely. Most creators who make their content do not give it away freely.
By itās nature, digital media is unrestricted, it costs nothing to reproduce and so cannot be āstolenā from someone because doing so doesnāt take it away from them. That was Thomas Jeffersonās point; ideas have no natural property of exclusive ownership because they can spread and propagate at no cost. Different from labor, which is finite since itās limited by time. Digital media is only restricted as an artificial means of extracting value from that limitation. But even then, thereās no reasonable expectation of control once that work is shared publicly because there are no physical boundaries that encapsulate it, no means to control its propagation once it departs from its origin. Thatās what I mean by āitās nature is freely accessible and infinitely reproducibleā.
Then, to be clear, youāre ok with someone stealing the work someone else made instead of paying you to do it at your job? If youāre a programmer, youāre ok with your boss just stealing someone elseās work if it does the job youāre being asked to do?
As a matter of principle, absolutely. I donāt blame someone from reusing my creative work, I blame those who own and restrict my means of living from me in the first place, and I blame the people who take ownership of that creative work and restrict access to it in order to produce a profit that they withhold from me and those that labor to produce it. It would be far more efficient if we didnāt require problems to be solved over and over again, and far more efficient if the accumulation of capital didnāt further alienate creators from their work. It is exactly the concept of ownership that limits creative work, not piracy.
The prostitute loses nothing that he/she had when they started the work and can continue to provide that same product to any number of people after they are done providing it to you.
THAT ISNāT TRUE. They loose their TIME and that time is finite and discrete. The work they do in that time isnāt something that can be copied. Youāre intentionally conflating labor and ownership and copyright (I am very explicitly using copyright here because that is what we are discussing, which is the RIGHT TO RESTRICT COPIES of a given work by the owner of the copyright). I paint a piece of art; the act of painting is the labor, the piece of art is the product. A prostitute is a service worker, they donāt produce a tangible product, THEIR LABOR IS THE PRODUCT. Every time the work is copied their time and effort are lost. Once digital media is produced, that media can be copied indefinitely at NO MATERIAL COST TO THE CREATOR.
Yes, in a fantasy Star Trekian utopia where money doesnāt matter and people donāt need money to survive, I would love for creators to make art just because thatās what theyāre passionate about. Iām not arguing that fantasy, Iām arguing reality.
UBI isnāt a star trek fantasy. Public domain isnāt fantasy. You can close your eyes to what already exists all you want, but you canāt insist āpiracy is stealingā without confronting the reality that it depends on the illusion of ownership.
Ok? I donāt think I did but does that really matter? The point still stands whether I used the idiom correctly or not.
Yes, that does matter. That would be the whole point of the idiom.
For example if I tried to argue a king can command the tide, and then used King Canute and the tide to prove my point, I would not only be not making my point stand but also confusing the crap out of everyone.
Are you trying to conflate āvalueā with āextractive market valueā? There are lots of things that have innate value but have no or very little market value.
It matters if anyone cares to understand what youāre actually asserting, since youāve again claimed āI am only arguing against the mischaracterization and dishonesty of claiming that it is not stealingā. How can anyone understand what you mean without knowing what you take āstealingā to mean, and why it matters?
Most people here would argue that a system that relies on exclusive ownership of ideas/digitally reproducible data in order to support those who do that labor (that we all benefit from) is one that is broken. In which case āstealingā would be misplacing both to whom the harm being done and the party doing the harm, because it isnāt the fault of the artist or the consumer that the system withholds the means of living from those who are unable to justify their existence through labor.
Thatās all irrelevant. Iām not making some hypothetical point. Whether you agree with āthe systemā or not, it is the system within which we live and operate and within which people need to make a living. It doesnāt matter whose fault it is. What matters is that someone is being deprived of something by someone who found value in a thing that the person created. If we accept that and attempt to justify as anything other than theft, then those people will cease to create themselves or will have to work further into the system that youāre arguing against as they will be unable to sustain themselves by creating things within that system.
If you want people to make more of the things you like, you have to pay them for those things. All the straw man arguments about DRM and corporations that attempt to justify piracy only further reinforce the current system rather than some imagined system.
Stealing has a definition. It means that youāre taking something from someone. If you canāt understand āstealingā in its most basic form, then thereās no point in having a further discussion with you because youāre only pretending not to understand to justify behavior that benefits you.
āPiracy is stealingā certainly seems to be a statement of fault, doesnāt it?
No, that someone is being deprived of something in the first instance by being made to justify their existence through their labor. That someone isnāt willing to pay for that labor is only depriving them in the second instance, and there are innumerable examples where essential labor is uncompensated in our market system.
That is not a given. I happen to think that by returning the time that was stolen from us (or some portion thereof) by coercing us into labor, we can all be free to create what we want. Forcing art to abide by the rules of the free market only serves to corrupt it, not enable it to sustain itself.
Stealing actually has a bunch of definitions, and most of them depend upon the abstract concept of āpropertyā.
Finally something we can agree on.
I was saying that it doesnāt matter whose fault it is to your assertion that āitās not the creators or the consumersā fault. Piracy does have a person thatās at fault and, logically, itās the person getting something for free that is not being offered for free.
Iām not talking about anyone justifying their existence through labor. Youāre arguing a straw man. Iām stating that creators make something with the intent to get paid for that thing. Their motivation for why theyāre doing so (whether itās to participate in the system, ājustify their existenceā, personal gratification, or otherwise) is irrelevant to the argument being made. Having numerable instances where people are uncompensated doesnāt justify those situations anymore than it justifies this one.
Everything else you said about artists is all well and good and entirely meaningless to the people who canāt afford to pay their bills because they have no choice but to live within the market that they do. Of course Iād be happy if we lived in a Star Trekian utopia where money doesnāt matter anymore but we donāt and pirating content that people make isnāt going to change that.
All Iām arguing is that itās dishonest to suggest that piracy is not stealing when the entire proposition of piracy is an entitlement to be able to consume something without paying for it. That is stealing by any stretch of the imagination. Whether youāre watching a movie without paying for it, using a website that someone built for you that you didnāt pay for, or having sex with a prostitute who you refuse to payā¦ itās all stealing.
Except it isnāt, because youāre arguing they deserve to be paid because otherwise they canāt afford to pay their bills. Youāve made it explicitly relevant.
And iām saying itās dishonest to suggest that piracy is stealing when the entire proposition of digital copyright is an entitlement to be able to extract currency from something thatās infinitely reproducible by denying access to it.
Where to start with this oneā¦
No, thatās not what Iām arguing. Iām arguing that they deserve to be paid because theyāre asking to be paid for their work rather than giving it away for free. Their reasons for wanting to get paid are irrelevant. They are not offering the product of their labor for free. Full stop. Why theyāre doing that doesnāt matter.
Iām not talking about copyright, though! Copyright is a legal concept defined by lawmakers. Iām not focusing on the legality of piracy at all. I donāt care if itās legal or not and I donāt care about the copyright. Iām simply arguing that people create things and expect to get paid for them. They donāt create them to give them away for free unless theyāve explicitly decided to do that.
Libraries have to get permission from creators to carry intangible goods. Libraries do not and cannot just buy media and offer it for consumption without permission, especially for digital media that is intangible. Sharing a DVD with a friend is a tangible good and therefore has physical limitations that intangible media does not so it is not the same. And, again, Iām not arguing about the legal implications of any of this so whether or not other things are legal or not is irrelevant.
Stiffing a contractor is exactly what I mean. The person that created your website. The person that created the intangible good that you seem to be arguing is just fine to copy indefinitely without paying that person for their time (again, unless theyāve explicitly granted its free use).
Why is that a weird and/or grotesque example? Sex workers are people and provide a service. So, yesā¦stiffing a contractor.
Ok? I donāt think I did but does that really matter? The point still stands whether I used the idiom correctly or not.
If I spend months intricately painting my car with the expectation of being paid, am i justified in asking to be paid for you looking at it? Am I justified in accusing you of theft if you take a picture of it as I drive by? If you share it with all your friends? If I post an elaborate tiktok and say, āif you viewed this please pay me $5ā, can I accuse you of theft if you donāt?
At what point does a desire to be paid for creative work become an obligation on the part of those who consume it? By what natural law is a creator granted exclusive right to the consumption and distribution of that intangible work?
Them expecting to be paid has no bearing on the moral or ethical obligation for me to do so. Theyāre asking to be paid for something that is by nature freely available and infinitely sharable. That doesnāt make something theft, especially not legally (which I now understand is not your point)
The most you could argue is for a social obligation (i.e. you ought to pay for things you benefit from), but that wouldnāt amount to fucking theft. If thatās the point youāre making, then itās disingenuous to refer to piracy as stealing.
Great, that simplifies things.
Youāre talking about selling labor under contract, not consuming or sharing an intangible good freely. By the quote I shared, an idea [or intangible work] is exclusively yours until you decide to divulge it. Once you share it, it is no longer yours. A better example is if I pay you for your time to make me a website, and then someone else copies the HTML from the site after I publish it (as with most piracy, the person youāre hurting isnāt the creator but the IP owner, which is usually not the creator). Your time has been paid for already, and trying to limit access to that work after the fact is simply an abuse of some abstract ownership over something that canāt really be stolen. Anyone is free to support the work they enjoy, but saying that itās an ethical obligation that amounts to theft if ignored is simply not a given.
Itās the same with the sex worker, except thereās no intangible product of the work a prostitute does thatās infinitely reproducibleā¦ that example seems to have been included specifically for the emotional weight that work elicits, since it doesnāt appear to be relevant to your point.
The problem is that in our current system, absent being paid for your labor or exclusive ownership to goods or capital needed by others, you canāt sustain yourself. Thatās a relevant condition to what I think about someone copying the work I produce, not an irrelevant deflection. Additionally, the motivation to do the work changes how someone might feel about it being shared: if you only have to do work you like to do and believe in, and not for any financial obligation, doesnāt it change the emotional appeal youāre making from the point of view of the creator? And the collective benefit for making those creations freely available would outweigh any concern about obligatory compensation or abstract ownership.
Absent those conditions, the ethical conclusion youāre trying to make wouldnāt be applicable by any stretch of the imagination.
This is all a nonsense argument.
You cannot force someone to pay for something that is displayed in public. If you took that car that you intricately painted and locked it in a garage and charged an admission fee to look at it, then, yes, you are justified. If you are driving it in public, everything else about what you say is invalidated - no, you are not justified in accusing someone of theft regardless of what happens after that. You gave up the right to that when you drove it publicly.
At the point of its creation. Otherwise, youāre making the argument that everyone is entitled to anything anyone creates from the moment itās created.
This is the flaw in this argument. It is not freely available unless the creator is giving it to people freely. Most creators who make their content do not give it away freely.
Then, to be clear, youāre ok with someone stealing the work someone else made instead of paying you to do it at your job? If youāre a programmer, youāre ok with your boss just stealing someone elseās work if it does the job youāre being asked to do?
This is not true. The prostitute loses nothing that he/she had when they started the work and can continue to provide that same product to any number of people after they are done providing it to you. To borrow from your descriptions of pirated content, her product is infinitely reproducible and freely available (so long as sheās been paid for it, right?).
ā¦and then you continue to make a claim for a situation that is not possible in our current system which makes it irrelevant.
Yes, in a fantasy Star Trekian utopia where money doesnāt matter and people donāt need money to survive, I would love for creators to make art just because thatās what theyāre passionate about. Iām not arguing that fantasy, Iām arguing reality.
Nope, iām making the argument that ownership ends when a work is shared publicly, not when itās created.
By itās nature, digital media is unrestricted, it costs nothing to reproduce and so cannot be āstolenā from someone because doing so doesnāt take it away from them. That was Thomas Jeffersonās point; ideas have no natural property of exclusive ownership because they can spread and propagate at no cost. Different from labor, which is finite since itās limited by time. Digital media is only restricted as an artificial means of extracting value from that limitation. But even then, thereās no reasonable expectation of control once that work is shared publicly because there are no physical boundaries that encapsulate it, no means to control its propagation once it departs from its origin. Thatās what I mean by āitās nature is freely accessible and infinitely reproducibleā.
As a matter of principle, absolutely. I donāt blame someone from reusing my creative work, I blame those who own and restrict my means of living from me in the first place, and I blame the people who take ownership of that creative work and restrict access to it in order to produce a profit that they withhold from me and those that labor to produce it. It would be far more efficient if we didnāt require problems to be solved over and over again, and far more efficient if the accumulation of capital didnāt further alienate creators from their work. It is exactly the concept of ownership that limits creative work, not piracy.
THAT ISNāT TRUE. They loose their TIME and that time is finite and discrete. The work they do in that time isnāt something that can be copied. Youāre intentionally conflating labor and ownership and copyright (I am very explicitly using copyright here because that is what we are discussing, which is the RIGHT TO RESTRICT COPIES of a given work by the owner of the copyright). I paint a piece of art; the act of painting is the labor, the piece of art is the product. A prostitute is a service worker, they donāt produce a tangible product, THEIR LABOR IS THE PRODUCT. Every time the work is copied their time and effort are lost. Once digital media is produced, that media can be copied indefinitely at NO MATERIAL COST TO THE CREATOR.
UBI isnāt a star trek fantasy. Public domain isnāt fantasy. You can close your eyes to what already exists all you want, but you canāt insist āpiracy is stealingā without confronting the reality that it depends on the illusion of ownership.
Yes, that does matter. That would be the whole point of the idiom.
For example if I tried to argue a king can command the tide, and then used King Canute and the tide to prove my point, I would not only be not making my point stand but also confusing the crap out of everyone.
You seemed to grasp the point so, no, it doesnāt really matter.