> I think it is self evident why creating artificial scarcity is immoral, but the point you are trying to make is that from a utilitarian standpoint you think it is preferable to behave in a way that is immoral in the micro scale since it will create greater good in the macro scale. If you agree, then I don't think there's any need to justify my belief here :)
I'll start with the end, I don't think the "immoral on the micro scale" idea makes much sense. Like, you can say it's "bad" or "annoying" on the micro scale, but if it is good for society as a whole to create artificial scarcity, it just isn't immoral for society to provide mechanisms to create it.
I also don't think it's self-evident that it's "immoral" on the small scale (though not sure what that means, since artificial scarcity is kind of a society-level mechanism.)
That said, maybe I'm just bumping on your use of the word immoral and we're not really disagreeing.
> That said, I also think that it is unclear that copyright is a net positive increase to creation and sharing of innovations. The current state of monetization is not inspiring since the actual creators usually are not well compensated and money tends to stay with large corporations that are essentially just "right holders". There's also many factors that actively stifle innovation and creativity.
This has been a talking point of people against copyright for a long time (I've been having these discussions for at least 20 years, personally).
But I think that you're basically wrong. It's pretty easy to see that you're wrong too - just look at the state of news, the state of music, etc. In most cases, artists today make far less money than they made before the rise of pirated alternatives. Patreon/other models/etc have helped some, but nowhere near where things were before.
In fact, you talk about the current state of compensation being bad, but I think that it would make more sense to listen to actual artists about whether or not copyright helps them or not. I've listened to a bunch, and most of them couldn't come close to doing what they love without copyright.
Also, personally, I'm a software dev. Most of what I do on a day-to-day basis is create IP. I'm fairly happy that someone can't just come along and repurpose everything I built, for free. Otherwise, I'm fairly sure I'd be out of a job.
(I'm fairly sure that without copyright/IP, most software we use wouldn't exist either.)
I'll start with the end, I don't think the "immoral on the micro scale" idea makes much sense. Like, you can say it's "bad" or "annoying" on the micro scale, but if it is good for society as a whole to create artificial scarcity, it just isn't immoral for society to provide mechanisms to create it.
I also don't think it's self-evident that it's "immoral" on the small scale (though not sure what that means, since artificial scarcity is kind of a society-level mechanism.)
That said, maybe I'm just bumping on your use of the word immoral and we're not really disagreeing.
> That said, I also think that it is unclear that copyright is a net positive increase to creation and sharing of innovations. The current state of monetization is not inspiring since the actual creators usually are not well compensated and money tends to stay with large corporations that are essentially just "right holders". There's also many factors that actively stifle innovation and creativity.
This has been a talking point of people against copyright for a long time (I've been having these discussions for at least 20 years, personally).
But I think that you're basically wrong. It's pretty easy to see that you're wrong too - just look at the state of news, the state of music, etc. In most cases, artists today make far less money than they made before the rise of pirated alternatives. Patreon/other models/etc have helped some, but nowhere near where things were before.
In fact, you talk about the current state of compensation being bad, but I think that it would make more sense to listen to actual artists about whether or not copyright helps them or not. I've listened to a bunch, and most of them couldn't come close to doing what they love without copyright.
Also, personally, I'm a software dev. Most of what I do on a day-to-day basis is create IP. I'm fairly happy that someone can't just come along and repurpose everything I built, for free. Otherwise, I'm fairly sure I'd be out of a job.
(I'm fairly sure that without copyright/IP, most software we use wouldn't exist either.)