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"That is to say imaginary property is a set of restrictions on how I am allowed to use my actual property." No. You yourself are not re-arranging any bits. You

"That is to say imaginary property is a set of restrictions on how I am allowed to use my actual property." No. You yourself are not re-arranging any bits. Your computer receives bits, then decodes them, and plays them. There is no "re-arrange bits exactly like this album" button. You wouldn't say that LPs are "placing restrictions on your record player". The artist may no longer have that specific product, but you can't really re-arrange the grooves on a record however you please either. "This restriction is supposed to be justified by society benefiting from the useful arts and sciences." I don't disagree that copyright law is poorly implemented. However, I do disagree that society somehow isn't benefiting from artists being paid for the work. It takes a -lot- of man hours to produce music, record it, mix and master it, and distribute it for release. None of that changes just because we distribute the end result electronically now. If someone takes months and years to come up with an engaging story and universe for a book, they deserve to own that creation and get paid for it. Why would anyone make anything creative in a world where it would be impossible to make a living from that work? Are we to expect artists to have infinite money supply and just produce things for our leisure, for free? This is just entitlement, with playing games about technicalities of distribution mediums to justify not paying people for their work. No one is forcing people to claim ownership of the things you create; Go ahead and write a book and make it public domain. Produce an album and make it public domain, if you feel that strongly about ownership. You can pay in the time, money, and man-hours of work involved yourself and still keep it free and public domain.

michaelmrose 5y ago
The point is that the user is in fact now able to rearrange the grooves on the record like magic and the artist wants to limit their way to do this if the user rearranges the grooves in a way that match their own work.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  No, the user can't do that. They can't do that with records, and they can't do that with bits either. Users can -download- specific bits and play them via decoding, and that's about it. Nobody can actually re-arrange anything themselves, although one could spend their life trying to manually flip bits to magically recreate it in the same manner. Good luck. The artist isn't limiting anything other than sharing those pre-made bits without a license/permission. And that is not unreasonable. My stance on this is referring to works of art as merely "bits" for the sake of argument is a bit ridiculous. We don't refer to LPs as "a collection of atoms", etc. Referring to art or products in general as "just bits" is just being pedantic for the sake of winning an argument.

michaelmrose 5y ago

The point is that the user is in fact now able to rearrange the grooves on the record like magic and the artist wants to limit their way to do this if the user rearranges the grooves in a way that match their own work.

andrewzah 5y ago
No, the user can't do that. They can't do that with records, and they can't do that with bits either. Users can -download- specific bits and play them via decoding, and that's about it. Nobody can actually re-arrange anything themselves, although one could spend their life trying to manually flip bits to magically recreate it in the same manner. Good luck. The artist isn't limiting anything other than sharing those pre-made bits without a license/permission. And that is not unreasonable. My stance on this is referring to works of art as merely "bits" for the sake of argument is a bit ridiculous. We don't refer to LPs as "a collection of atoms", etc. Referring to art or products in general as "just bits" is just being pedantic for the sake of winning an argument.