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0 pointskybernetikos3y ago0 comments

I don't think that works - the freedom he's talking about is the freedom of the person who owns the computers, devices and digital records.

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

0 pointskybernetikos3y ago0 comments

I don't think that works - the freedom he's talking about is the freedom of the person who owns the computers, devices and digital records.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

kgwgk3y ago· 2 in thread

"You think books having a cost is a restriction of your freedom? Why? And why books, but not your work?"

"Because copying information from one computer to another costs nothing (except for the electricity and internet access). Any attempt to restrict that capability is restricting your freedom."

Why books, and not his work?

kybernetikosOP3y ago

Why do you think the author of the comment is not applying the same principle to themselves? I assume that they either have a job where they don't need the government to restrict other peoples rights of freedom of speech in order to get paid, or that they do apply it to themselves.

I don't think anyone is arguing that everyone must make all digital information freely available to everyone else. Nobody is saying that books must be provided for free. The argument is that nobody should be restricted from sharing their data if that's what they want to do. That will naturally result in most widely shared digital files being made available for free, but it's because those with them exercised a right to share rather than because anyone was compelled to do anything.

kgwgk3y ago

> The argument is that nobody should be restricted from sharing their files if that's what they want to do.

Don't you want to restrict people from sharing their files - even if that's what they want to do - when those files are things like your banking documents or medical records?

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