Text editors, word processors, compilers, code analyzers, etc, are all examples of what I referred to as software. In fact tools were (and are) the driving force behind opensource software. Guys got sick of having no way to get anything done on their own without resources provided by their employers (and frequently results therefore claimed by their employers) or major cash layout, and built tools for themselves. Everything else, all the free applications, games, etc, came after the tools.
This handly ignores a large chunk of my post, and it just states the obivous. The whole point I made was that you are comparing operating systems and video games, but both are consumed diffrently and have different markets.
It's a copy market. Information products have the peculiar property that they can be copied easily, quickly, and without noticeable expense, where physical objects can only be transferred (depriving one person of the object) and services can only be performed (which requires time and effort). Musicians playing concerts, painters painting portraits and commissions, programmers supporting games (and tools, etc) or running tournaments, etc, are providing a service. Farmers growing food are providing a physical object which, afterwards, they do not have anymore.
Yes, but that is not what you said. You pointed out that, since having stuff is good, and price makes it hard to have stuff, having free stuff must be good, and you concluded that, because of this, all intellectual property should be free. Now, you threw in the “intellectual” part, and none of what you said supported that restriction. Your reasoning would require that
all goods be free.
Except that if the thing they give away is information, they still have it.
Except that they can never get back the time it takes to produce the information originally.
Physical objects are not a copy market, so the analogy does not hold.
By the reasoning you used in your previous post, the analogy
does hold. I was pointing out that your reasoning led to a logical extreme that did not make sense. Now your argument has changed.
But in both cases, the people involved experience an increase in total value.
Um, no. Not necessarily. If you give away a physical object, you experience a decrease in total value. If you give away intellectual property that you have created, someone is getting something for which they did not need to spend time, so the increase in net value was not equal.
The man who breaks a pact for his own gain has committed a morally wrong act against a single entity, who can take action to stop him. Adding content controls to information, without provision for ensuring that the protected content eventually enters the public domain is committing a morally wrong act against future generations who cannot yet defend themselves.
Copying while it may be in breach of a pact and therefore wrong, increases information and the access to it, which is a net good. DRM, while it may be legal, decreases information and access to it, and is therefore problematic. But DRM without ensuring that the content eventually is available in the public domain is more accurately theft than copying. It is theft from members of future generations, and it is theft that deprives them of access to information rather than “theft” that deprives someone of exclusive control of information.
In short it is more precisely theft (as in depriving them of something with value) it is a theft against more people, and against people who are defenseless.
That logic is absurd, if I may be so blunt. By not writing software, you are depriving everyone something of value, and, as you define theft as “depriving someone of something of value” every piece of software you did not write you stole from everyone. By this reasoning, every piece of software, music, literature, and other art that you do not create and give to society, you stole from them. Should society come to your door and demand that you generate information for them? If you do not comply, should they throw you in jail for theft? Are you robbing future generations by not churning out music and video games?
You have mostly ignored what I posted in my initial reply to you while shifting the topic to a matter of morality. If you recall, the initial point of discussion was whether all intellectual property will become free. You said that it will, but you have yet to give a decisive argument to support your assertion.
