Economic Abundance

Do rules, and hence legislation, of economic scarcity apply in a world of abundance? Jon Healey:

In essence, [Karl] Sigfrid is saying that something in unlimited supply can't be stolen. His position is a variation on a theme advanced by Mike Masnick of Techdirt.com, among others: that the entertainment industry's aggressive copyright-enforcement efforts spring from an outdated, analog-era notion of scarcity.

The catallaxians will be murdering kittens aplenty, Sigfrid's quote in that article calls upon Hayek and Friedman.
avocadia: "The catallaxians will be murdering kittens aplenty"

You owe me 1 keyboard.
avocadia: Even if it isn't possible to steal digital property - and I agree with arguments for and against that proposition - it is possible to break the law by providing digital property to others by file sharing. If you bought a CD, for example, you agreeded to a license that is backed by a law that I - for one - support, that the owner of the copyright has the right to dictate the terms of distribution of the item. Ignoring the RIAA's contentions on the extent of the consumer's rights within that license, when the consumer starts to distribute the item themselves they are taking away the right of the copyright holder to distribute only as they see fit.

Even in a post-scarcity world, I'd hope that if a creator wants to make their creation available under certain rules that those rules would be respected. Even now, what would we say if someone took someone else's GPL code and re-released it as public domain?
Felix the Cassowary: Digital copyrighted data is not in infinite supply. It needs to be created, and the creation stops if you don't get any money from it. No-one would be happy if all creation of information stopped because we could infinitely transfer what we've already got.

If, on the other hand, we had an infinite supply of turnips of equal quality, then I don't think it'd matter much if I took your turnip off you. There's a certain amount of inconvenience to you but presumably if the supply is infinite it's pretty easy to come by another you can take. And this assumes transport of these turnips is not an issue...

However, with digital data, I can take it off you, and you've still got something. The notion of "stealing" does not apply in the same way and so you can't compare. Downloading music is still wrong, but it's because you're unethically not giving someone their due; stealing otoh is wrong because you're unethically taking someone's property away from them without permission.

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