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Surely it's important to pay attention to what is actually said in discussions. What was being said is that taking a train seat with zero marginal cost to the t

Surely it's important to pay attention to what is actually said in discussions. What was being said is that taking a train seat with zero marginal cost to the train owners is parallel to downloading a song which has zero marginal cost to the band or record label. Both are taking something with no marginal cost. The point was that stealing that train seat really is stealing. That means that the argument "there is no marginal cost" is not a sufficient defense of music piracy. It does not exclude some other defense of music piracy.

jessriedel 16y ago
My interpretation... krschultz: "Trains have zero marginal cost. We call them stealing. Therefore, zero marginal cost does not prevent something from being called stealing." InclinedPlane: "Trains are different from music, in that the latter never fills up. Therefore, it is possible for zero marginal cost to be a defense." You: "InclinedPlane, just imagine a train which doesn't fill up." Me: "You are right that the half-empty train and piracy are similar. This still doesn't justify calling it stealing." You: "[Snarky comment]. All I was claiming is that they are similar." ...and I agree. I wasn't saying you were wrong in your initial comment, I was saying that you were right but it doesn't complete krschultz's argument. No need to get snarky. Not every reply to your comment is an assertion that you're wrong.
- xenophanes 16y ago
  Your comment was completely off topic. You said there was a big difference between zero-mariginal-cost stealing and entirely-mariginal-cost stealing. Of course there is, but that has nothing to do with the arguments in the discussion. That's why I said you weren't following the discussion and explained the discussion to you. Now you've rewritten your comment to remove the part about taking money out of someone's wallet and summarized it as "Your statement is true but that doesn't justify a conclusion [that you never asserted]". But the wallet part of your comment was important to your comment and is the reason I replied as I did. The topic of my comments was about the parallel btwn no marginal cost activities (someone denied it with a bad argument, and I said so), so your reply to me (yes it was a reply to me, or you wouldn't have it nested under me) was off topic and missing the point of what I was talking about. It now sounds like you wanted to be talking to the original poster, krschultz, not me, which would have made more sense.

jessriedel 16y ago

My interpretation... krschultz: "Trains have zero marginal cost. We call them stealing. Therefore, zero marginal cost does not prevent something from being called stealing." InclinedPlane: "Trains are different from music, in that the latter never fills up. Therefore, it is possible for zero marginal cost to be a defense." You: "InclinedPlane, just imagine a train which doesn't fill up." Me: "You are right that the half-empty train and piracy are similar. This still doesn't justify calling it stealing." You: "[Snarky comment]. All I was claiming is that they are similar." ...and I agree. I wasn't saying you were wrong in your initial comment, I was saying that you were right but it doesn't complete krschultz's argument. No need to get snarky. Not every reply to your comment is an assertion that you're wrong.

xenophanes 16y ago
Your comment was completely off topic. You said there was a big difference between zero-mariginal-cost stealing and entirely-mariginal-cost stealing. Of course there is, but that has nothing to do with the arguments in the discussion. That's why I said you weren't following the discussion and explained the discussion to you. Now you've rewritten your comment to remove the part about taking money out of someone's wallet and summarized it as "Your statement is true but that doesn't justify a conclusion [that you never asserted]". But the wallet part of your comment was important to your comment and is the reason I replied as I did. The topic of my comments was about the parallel btwn no marginal cost activities (someone denied it with a bad argument, and I said so), so your reply to me (yes it was a reply to me, or you wouldn't have it nested under me) was off topic and missing the point of what I was talking about. It now sounds like you wanted to be talking to the original poster, krschultz, not me, which would have made more sense.