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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33461 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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Theft is wrong because taking something which doesn't belong to you is inherently wrong.

"Taking" harms someone due to deprivation of the old owner, not possession by the new one. Copying is not taking in any meaningful sense. There is no moral case against copying in and of itself; you can argue that since we have laws against it, those laws should be followed, and you can argue that creating and enforcing these laws is net-positive for everyone, but the act itself is clearly net-positive in its first-order effects.

If you look at the right of property ownership, a useful way to conceptualize it is as a bundle of collateral rights. 'Intellectual property' is a wonky case, because some of the analogies to physical property don't hold up--as you say, if I copy a work that you created, I have not removed the original from your possession. But some of the other collateral rights do hold up in analogy: in this case, the 'right to exclude.' If I own a piece of land, I generally have the right to exclude others from it--if you want to get from one side of my property to the other, you need to go around, otherwise you are trespassing. If there is an easement that generally lets people cross a corner of my property without being liable for trespass, that is one stick out of the full and complete bundle of rights that I'd otherwise have to the property.

IMO, the maximalist positions both ways have flaws; I think there's something to the 'intellectual property is a form of property' position, but it's a substantially non-central example of such.

But some of the other collateral rights do hold up in analogy: in this case, the 'right to exclude.'

This seems to still derive from there only being one physical piece of property, which allows only one sort of use or occupation at a time. I need to keep others off my land because their use impinges on mine. If someone could create a functionally-identical piece of land that they could occupy and use without impinging on me, up to and including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain, we'd be right back to the situation where there's no obvious harm to doing so.

I don't recognize a moral right to exclude other people from ownership and participation as such. I recognize a right to exclude because such a right is necessary to prevent obvious harms from squatting, but duplication obviates those harms and thus the necessity for such a principle. Artificial scarcity for its own sake seems innately perverse.

There's also value based on scarcity. If I own a piece of real property near Disneyland, the value of that property is not merely based on the utility of being-near-Disneyland, but also the reality that this proximity is rare--if you could create "a functionally-identical piece of land...including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain" then the value of my property would be markedly reduced, even though the baseline utility of being-near-Disneyland hasn't changed.

Like if the crusty old farmer next door suddenly decides to turn his back 40 into condos? I don't think you have the right to stop him in this instance.

Yes, but I would argue that no one has a right to the preservation of such value. If you own the property next to Disneyland, Disneyland doesn't need your permission to close down and move, and if you own the highway to Disneyland, you don't have a right to quash air travel.

Your right to that value is contingent, not innate. We grant that right because not granting it would have other, worse effects, not because granting it is good in itself. If we could deny that right without those other harmful effects, we'd be better off doing so even if the result is the loss of the value you held. Enforcing artificial scarcity may be a necessary evil in some rare cases, but it's still evil and very often not even necessary.

You're playing silly semantic games with "taking". To take something does not require deprivation of possession, but even if it did that's a poor hinge for your argument. You're nitpicking my word choice, not offering a substantive objection.

  • -11

You are using the label "taking" because it has strong negative associations. It has strong negative associations because central examples of "taking" cause harm. Duplication of data very clearly does not cause harm in these ways. This is basic logic, not "playing silly semantic games". Stretching affect-loaded labels to cover highly non-central examples of what they're supposed to describe, on the other hand, pretty clearly is playing silly semantic games. I can't stop you from calling duplication "taking", but I certainly can point out that doing so is dishonest. But hey, don't take my word for it when you can consult the sacred texts.

Ah, so you're not playing semantic games, you're accusing me of bad faith. Yes, that's so much better. /s

No, my good man, I'm not using the term "taking" to try to cash in on some negative connotations in a disingenuous way. It was just a simple word choice, one which I maintain is actually the correct one (taking never has meant that one must deprive someone of something, nor does it have negative connotations, contrary to your assertions on both counts). But even if I were wrong on that score (which I don't believe I am), I'm not some kind of bad faith commenter trying to twist words to my advantage. At the absolute worst, I made a poor choice of words.

It's honestly super obnoxious that you (and others) have chosen to jump down my throat over a simple word choice, one which doesn't actually affect my position even if I had used something else. Maybe instead of assuming bad faith on my part, you should follow the forum rules (you know, the other holy texts) and be charitable.

  • -14

I would disagree and say you are the one playing a semantic game here.

Taking implies that there is some thing (item) which you now have which no one else can now have because you have it.

That is simply impossible in the case we're talking about.

Again: that is not part of what it means to take something. But even if it were, that is still not a substantive objection to my point. That is nitpicking my choice of words, not actually a meaningful argument against my position.

It is, in fact, what it means to take something.

And since it is, it is also a substantive objection to your point.

And since it is a substantive objection, you have not answered it.

No, it's not a substantive objection. This is what I mean when I say you (and others) are just playing semantic games. Let's say I rephrase my argument thusly to appease your idiosyncratic definition of "take":

Stealing is to come into possession of something, or even to copy it, against the wishes of the person who owns it.

Nothing has actually changed in my argument. I've simply replaced the word "take" with a much wordier phrasing just because you're being a pedant (and an incorrect one at that). So now, you still have to address my actual position instead of playing inane word games. Which is why I said your objection is not substantive. You are attacking merely the word choice, and not the actual position I hold.

I don't know why you're so hell bent on playing semantic games. Nor do I understand where the hell you get the impression it's somehow my fault. I wasn't the one to start this pedantry about "well ackshually taking things means x". I'm simply responding to the semantic games others initiated.

Stealing is to come into possession of something, or even to copy it, against the wishes of the person who owns it.

Saying "this is stealing, according to a definition that I just made up and you haven't agreed to" only begs the question of why your bespoke definition should be used rather than the standard one. You can redefine terms as much as you please, but if you can't persuade others that the redefinition achieves something other than making you correct by definition, they have no reason to agree to use it.

Your position is that duplication is wrong. When others ask why it is wrong, you say that it's taking. When others point out that it doesn't actually appear to be substantively similar to central examples of "taking", since it lacks the features that makes those central examples objectionable, you complain that they aren't just taking your label as the final argument. What you have not done is address the core question here: why should we consider duplication wrong? What harm does it cause, what right does it violate, such that people have a right to protection from it? A crazy person could claim that me breathing when I visit their house is a "harm" to them, because I'm "taking" their air, and that would both be a very stupid argument, and very obviously a better argument than you've made so far.

Upthread, someone else argues that part of property rights is a right to exclusion, a right to deny access to others, not merely to possess yourself. This seems highly questionable to me, but it's at least a coherent argument.

[EDIT] - Upthread, you claim that it's wrong because what you're copying "doesn't belong to you". Of course, the clump of matter doesn't need to belong to you, because you're making a new clump of matter, so this must mean that the particular arrangement, the data, is what belongs to someone. But in what sense do ideas or data "belong" to someone? Who owns the concept of the letter "x"? Can I copyright particular numbers, or perhaps their combinations, and then charge other people for using them?

Since the phrasing here seems to be causing a lot of confusion, I will offer a potential clarification. Is it your position that posession of something that doesn't belong to you is immoral regardless of how you came to have it? Therefore quantifying harm done to the original owner is irrelevant?

No, because someone can give something to you and that's perfectly fine.

In that case the item now belongs to you, no? Should we enumerate all the legitimate ways to transfer ownership and assume anything else to be stealing, or should we draw a narrow definition around stealing and consider everything outside it to be acceptable?

This is the “license” solution. GPL, BSD, MIT…they’re all sets of contract terms defining acceptable use.

You appear to be asserting that if I steal my neighbor's chainsaw, that's bad, but if I then give it to you, that's perfectly fine.

I don't think that's what you mean to say, but it is what you're actually saying. I think you should consider stepping away from the keyboard, taking a couple deep breaths, and thinking a bit about how this thread is going, because at the moment you don't appear to be doing a good job of either understanding or conveying meaning with the words you use. I genuinely do not mean this to be insulting, and invite you to show this thread to someone you trust for a disinterested outside perspective. I do not wish you ill, but I do find this thread bewildering; I recognize your name from the old place, and do not remember you acting in this manner in the past. If you like, I'll step out here and leave you to it.

I agree on the object level, but you seem to be overheating a little yourself, dude. Calling his argument "dishonest", "crazy" and "very stupid" isn't too civil.

It's an assessment you're free to make, but I think my objections stand up pretty well in the places I made them. As a whole, this particular sub-thread is bewildering to me, and I'm going to go do something else while it sorts itself out.

Tbh I was expecting you to draw a natural connection between pro-pirating utilitarians and mountains of skulls.

heh. I still owe you a reply, come to think of it. I hit the character limit and decided the result wasn't productive to post, so have to rewrite it for concision.

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