The moment my work (I assume you mean work as in "labor") becomes that easy to replicate, it will become worthless. But there are certain laws of physics which make it quite improbable to happen.
In the world of IP and copyright law, the ownership rights that go with owning a piece of media with particular patterns are restricted. You are not allowed to dispose of the patterns on a DVD as you might wish despite supposedly 'owning' it. This is clearly a difference from previously understood models of what ownership was.
> The ordinary subjects of property are well known, and easily conceived . . . But property, when applied to ideas, or literary and intellectual compositions, is perfectly new and surprising . . . by far the most comprehensive denomination of it would be a property in nonsense - Lord Gardenston 1773
No. Choosing to price something you own beyond its marginal cost of delivery is not a restriction on freedom.
What is a restriction on freedom is not allowing others to take something they have (a collection of words / pattern of bits / a SD card / a hard disk) and choose to give that away to others. The fact that in an internet-connected world allowing that will result in most people being able to acquire most files for no more than their marginal cost of delivery is a result of freedom, not a restriction on it.
It seems extremely unlikely that you can keep the price on any widely distributed collection of bits much above 0 for an appreciable length of time without governments intervening to remove that freedom of sharing and copying from people.
When a fence is built around the apple tree, it is a restriction on the ability of the apple tree to spread its seeds and on those that desire the apples, both.
I don’t personally have a strong stance on this particular issue, but perhaps this analogy will help you understand the view of people who believe that knowledge should be free.
But I think it is very convenient that it applies to the work these people want to consume (which should be free), and not to the work they perform (which should be paid).
Why should the software engineer be paid but the author not? Why is the written word information but not the code?
I would trust the motives more if there was a general coherence to it all, beyond the consumption of media. Information comes in many forms.
There’s a very big Open Source / Free as in Freedom / AND Free as in Beer contingent on HN.
And it becomes very obvious that if people can share stuff for free, someone somewhere will. That combination of freedom to share speech and ability to do so at 0 marginal cost results in books being shared for no cost.
