3 ms·

Law is pretty vital to being able to have a planet with billions of people on it. If for no other reason than people are really crafty and nearly optimal for w

Law is pretty vital to being able to have a planet with billions of people on it. If for no other reason than people are really crafty and nearly optimal for wrecking up each other's business if they put their minds to it. Imagine how much human resource is spent trying to preserve profits... Now imagine how much would be spent on preserving anything without a legal system in place. "Nice house you have, hate to see anything happen to it" etc.

hospitalJail 4y ago
That is pretty disingenuous response IMO. I'm clearly not talking about property rights or criminal law. If you must, I agree with you. But that wasnt the intention of my comment.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  But intellectual property rights are property rights (right there in the name; granted, it's a different kind of property, infinitely replicable, but it's still "intangible personal property," protected as such). ... and infringing a valid copyright willfully for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain is a criminal offense in the US (17 U.S.C. 506(A)). It's up to a felony violation. You can, for personal reasons, assert there's a fundamental difference in kind (and you'd be joining an argument dating back past the founding of the U.S., an argument where Thomas Jefferson once said of protection of intellectual property that "other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society"), but in the sense that any law has any real meaning or force, it's exactly as much the law as the law against kicking you out of your own house because I like your house better.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I'm clearly not talking about property rights This is literally a property rights case, so if your comment wasn’t about property rights it was wildly out of context.

3 ms·

Law is pretty vital to being able to have a planet with billions of people on it. If for no other reason than people are really crafty and nearly optimal for w

by shadowgovt 4y ago

hospitalJail 4y ago
That is pretty disingenuous response IMO. I'm clearly not talking about property rights or criminal law. If you must, I agree with you. But that wasnt the intention of my comment.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  But intellectual property rights are property rights (right there in the name; granted, it's a different kind of property, infinitely replicable, but it's still "intangible personal property," protected as such). ... and infringing a valid copyright willfully for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain is a criminal offense in the US (17 U.S.C. 506(A)). It's up to a felony violation. You can, for personal reasons, assert there's a fundamental difference in kind (and you'd be joining an argument dating back past the founding of the U.S., an argument where Thomas Jefferson once said of protection of intellectual property that "other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society"), but in the sense that any law has any real meaning or force, it's exactly as much the law as the law against kicking you out of your own house because I like your house better.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I'm clearly not talking about property rights This is literally a property rights case, so if your comment wasn’t about property rights it was wildly out of context.