Journal Nyarly's Journal: Technology triumphing over scarcity 2
Here goes my restatement:
Hypothesize that sometime in the near future, we invent a device that can duplicate entire objects. By so doing, we would effectively eliminate the basis of conventional economics: scarcity. Once anyone can get whatever they want as cheaply as breathing, there's no longer cause to establish economic systems to control the distribution of resources.
One might argue, though, that manufacturers of every stripe would fight to have such a technology quashed, or at least limited so that it wouldn't affect their industry. This observation stems by analogy to the efforts of the RI and MP double-A (which looks confusing, but it's how I like to say it) to limit devices that can duplicate their products perfectly.
This seems to be an extraordinarily weak argument against the behavior of the MPAA and RIAA, since we cannot eat music or live in movies. While the scarcity of "content" is largely artificial, removing music and movies from an economy based on the notion of scarcity removes, to a degree, the producers and distributers of those goods from being able to participate in that economy. While food and shelter are still scarce (in the economic sense of the term), it seems unfair to admit that a thing has value, but remove it from an economics of scarcity.
On the other hand, if food and shelter were not scarce, if they were as available as dirt or air or water, the basis of that economy is destroyed, and there's no reason to squabble over money. Why kill yourself for a buck when you don't need it?
It's this fundamental difference between a matter duplicator (or, as an example, the Matter Pipe in Diamond Age) and a CD burner that weakens this argument to the point that it's effectively worthless. I begin to think it shouldn't have been included in an EFF article at all, since by extension, it weakens their position.
I don't want to set up straw man just to knock him down. My views on property rights in general, and IP in particular are in constant flux; I'm certainly not standing with the copyright cartels. What I'd like to be able to see is a clear path from a matter duplicator to a CDRW, or a crucial similarity between food and music. Essentially, a flaw in my reasoning here, because except for that glaring flaw, it's a very compelling argument.
Fair reference: the article is here. And the sig was grumpygrodyguy's.
All I can say is... (Score:1)
While I don't believe in the powers of the "copywrite cartlels", I do agree with you...
Compelling ideas... (Score:2)
I rip everything I have so I can listen to it thru iTunes on my Mac. Not because I am evil or want to rip anyone off.
OTH after listening to Lenny Kravitz 5 I realize, "Man I should have just borrowed that and ripped the two decent songs off of it." I find this a lot. So what happens is not every album is Led Zeppelin, Van Halen I, Dark Side Of The Moon or even Untouchables. In fact, most are pretty bad.
This is where people get the idea it is OK to rip and burn. They figure, look only 20% of this album is worth a damn, so if 5 of us share the album then it's all good. Software has the same problem especially MS software.
The thing of it is I doubt most people would walk into a store and steal a CD and not know they were doing something wrong. So why doesn't this translate to copying (ripping) a CD? Nothing has passed through their hands. Music is intangible. software is intangible. Oh yeah there's a disk, but that's just what carried the intangible item.
A book is tangible (a paper one anyway,) and onion is tangible, a car, a boat etc., etc.. Therefore the copying of those things would probably (and rightly) been seen by most as wrong. One shouldn't go to their friends house and copy their new Honda. That would be wrong. Going to you friends house and getting the new Christina Aguluria is not seen as so wrong (although it really should be