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We've been speaking of rights in the legal context. And laws != morals. I think there are certain rights to access natural resources. For example the beaches o

We've been speaking of rights in the legal context. And laws != morals. I think there are certain rights to access natural resources. For example the beaches of California are strictly public property. I think there are rights to fair access to natural resources such as water. However I do not think that if I spend considerable resources to build a distribution network for that water that other people have a right to access that network. I do have plenty. More than I need. Food, water, and shelter. There are people who do not have enough of them. There are many people who have no shelter. We call them homeless. I have more rooms in my house than required to thrive. Does someone who is homeless have a right to enter my home and make use of the excess shelter that I have?

paulhebert 12y ago
I think this is a very important conversation for us to be having and I don't claim to have anywhere near all of the answers. However, I do think that your first sentence kind of dodges the question here. The rest of this comment thread was discussing what rights people should have, not what rights they do have. If we approach this from a legal viewpoint the conversation is over before it starts: Piracy's illegal, you don't have a right to content. You don't have a right to food. However, when we start looking at it from a moral perspective things are much more open ended: Should we have a right to content? Should we have a right to food? I think these are more interesting questions and that falling back on the rule of law kind of kills the discussion. I guess at the end of the day I don't know the best way to handle copyright, but I do know we should have a conversation about it, and that we should come at it from a morality perspective.