4 ms·

I think the moral dilemma is a completely artificial one. You have to do a lot of bending over backwards in your head before you come to the extremely weird con

I think the moral dilemma is a completely artificial one. You have to do a lot of bending over backwards in your head before you come to the extremely weird conclusion that knowledge can "belong" to a particular person or entity, and the even weirder conclusion that even if you pay for access to the knowledge, you still don't get to share it as you see fit. This is just capitalism-brain, nothing more. It's not natural, and it's definitely not optimal as far as moral maxims go. That modern society is structured around protecting Alice rather than protecting Bob and helping him free the 0s and 1s is simply a side effect of this, and an extremely unfortunate, progress-stalling one... the kind where you seriously contemplate going back in a time-machine to fix whatever went wrong to make us end up with.. this...

brickteacup 3y ago
> extremely weird conclusion I agree, it's so weird that people who devote time, effort, and resources to the production of articles or books somehow think they're entitled to be compensated for the use of those products! What a bizarre belief! I mean, obviously they should just give them away for free. Not like they need money to survive or anything. They can just go on food stamps and live under a bridge or something.
- sam0x17 3y ago
  It really is. Society should be structured such that these people (and really, everyone) can just work on their creative works or whatever they are good at without having to worry about where their next meal is coming from or whether their loved ones and dependents will be provided for. That we have to capitalize and monetize everything instead of just distributing resources fairly is bizarre. If we were to simulate thousands of different realities, I would think this state of being would be like a shitty local minima that you tweak the hyper-parameters to avoid. As a creative person currently making an obscenely high amount of money doing rust development (north of $350k/yr), I'd happily throw all of that away to just be able to work on my open source projects in perpetuity if I could trust that society will take care of me, forever, in exchange. In fact, playing this whole capitalism game is a huge waste of my time and energy that I'd much rather spend making creative works without worrying about how I'll monetize them. As someone who makes creative works, I don't _want_ to have to charge people to use/access/enjoy them.
  - Vicinity9635 3y ago
    Hear, hear. We finally invent a thing (the Internet) that will let us share knowledge for free, and one of the first things that happens is a bunch of lawyers invent more work and job security for themselves by creating this fantasy notion that you can have Imaginary Property and they call it "Intellectual Property" so it's not immediately obvious how ridiculously selfish and society-retarding it is. We live in a world of actual scarcity and they invented some artificial scarcity to benefit themselves exclusively, then immediately funded a bunch of bribery^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying to make it illegal to share information for free. >As someone who makes creative works, I don't _want_ to have to charge people to use/access/enjoy them. Same here. I self published some stories on amazon and they won't let me charge less than a dollar for them, or I would. I'm infinitely more interested in people enjoying them than profiting from it. In fact, I found that they almost immediately ended up in some pirated torrent and was like, "How cool is that? Somebody thought it was worth pirating." This notion that creative types won't create without financial incentive seems to come from lawyers, not creative types.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > We finally invent a thing (the Internet) that will let us share knowledge for free, and one of the first things that happens is a bunch of lawyers invent more work and job security for themselves by creating this fantasy notion that you can have Imaginary Property and they call it "Intellectual Property" so it's not immediately obvious how ridiculously selfish and society-retarding it is. I think your narrative has gotten the relation between the invention of the internet and the creation of the subcategory of intangible personal property known as “intellectual property” very, very wrong. Like, intellectual property is older than the USA and the internet is... not.

brickteacup 3y ago

> extremely weird conclusion I agree, it's so weird that people who devote time, effort, and resources to the production of articles or books somehow think they're entitled to be compensated for the use of those products! What a bizarre belief! I mean, obviously they should just give them away for free. Not like they need money to survive or anything. They can just go on food stamps and live under a bridge or something.

sam0x17 3y ago
It really is. Society should be structured such that these people (and really, everyone) can just work on their creative works or whatever they are good at without having to worry about where their next meal is coming from or whether their loved ones and dependents will be provided for. That we have to capitalize and monetize everything instead of just distributing resources fairly is bizarre. If we were to simulate thousands of different realities, I would think this state of being would be like a shitty local minima that you tweak the hyper-parameters to avoid. As a creative person currently making an obscenely high amount of money doing rust development (north of $350k/yr), I'd happily throw all of that away to just be able to work on my open source projects in perpetuity if I could trust that society will take care of me, forever, in exchange. In fact, playing this whole capitalism game is a huge waste of my time and energy that I'd much rather spend making creative works without worrying about how I'll monetize them. As someone who makes creative works, I don't _want_ to have to charge people to use/access/enjoy them.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  Hear, hear. We finally invent a thing (the Internet) that will let us share knowledge for free, and one of the first things that happens is a bunch of lawyers invent more work and job security for themselves by creating this fantasy notion that you can have Imaginary Property and they call it "Intellectual Property" so it's not immediately obvious how ridiculously selfish and society-retarding it is. We live in a world of actual scarcity and they invented some artificial scarcity to benefit themselves exclusively, then immediately funded a bunch of bribery^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying to make it illegal to share information for free. >As someone who makes creative works, I don't _want_ to have to charge people to use/access/enjoy them. Same here. I self published some stories on amazon and they won't let me charge less than a dollar for them, or I would. I'm infinitely more interested in people enjoying them than profiting from it. In fact, I found that they almost immediately ended up in some pirated torrent and was like, "How cool is that? Somebody thought it was worth pirating." This notion that creative types won't create without financial incentive seems to come from lawyers, not creative types.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > We finally invent a thing (the Internet) that will let us share knowledge for free, and one of the first things that happens is a bunch of lawyers invent more work and job security for themselves by creating this fantasy notion that you can have Imaginary Property and they call it "Intellectual Property" so it's not immediately obvious how ridiculously selfish and society-retarding it is. I think your narrative has gotten the relation between the invention of the internet and the creation of the subcategory of intangible personal property known as “intellectual property” very, very wrong. Like, intellectual property is older than the USA and the internet is... not.