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Stealing bread to feed your family when the alternative is starving is not the same as watching Game of Thrones.

• fwn 5y ago
  You both argue around the question: how does the unlicensed reproduction of media morally compare to stealing. Argument 1: Sufficiently severe benefits should mitigate the moral fault in theft. Argument 2: Sufficiently small damage should mitigate the moral fault in theft. You both seem to at least implicitly agree that both is theft, which would be a traditional point of disagreement in the debate. I commented because I think one and two might be structurally the same argument: It's a consequentialist idea of utility thresholds. A key disagreement would be whether there are thresholds that make the quantitative difference in utility a qualitative difference. Think hunger on one side and unquantifiable small loss in profits on the other side.
  • wyager 5y ago
    I’m actually arguing from a slightly different consequentialist position; I don’t think intellectual property law in general is socially efficient. You have to consider whether the (putative) benefit of IP-based R&D funding exceeds the loss associated with the introduction of artificial scarcity, social cost of IP enforcement, etc. For something like rocket engines or metallurgy, I would say “maybe”. For the latest Star Wars spinoff, I would say “strong no”. Even for rocket engines or whatever, it’s not clear if the patent system is still producing acceptable returns.