The only thing that ties you to your physical goods is the information of your ownership of them in the first place. If I have a device capable of cloning that information and taking that which you claim to own simpl because it is possible, you would would have little recourse in taking it back.

Except you aren't taking it. You are copying it. And that magic machine? It's your computer. If you could copy physical property, I can't think of a single thing I own that I'd seriously mind someone copying.
Stealing information is different than copying. Like I said, if someone copied my car (if I had a car), I'd have no beef with them what so ever.

The thing is, you might be okay with people copying any of your private intellectual property/information, but most people, it seems, are not. Especially those who have invested a lot of time, money, and effort into their work. It appears that you are an exception.

Imagine that I was a professional inventor, and that creating innovative and useful things was solely responsible for my income. If someone took a patented (pretty much copywrited) idea from me (an idea which could have potentially generated me thousands of dollars), and used it for their own benefit, it's possible that I could instead receive a significantly smaller profit for something which I alone worked hard to produce. The consequences of this could be a decreased quality of life for myself, possibly due to an inability to adequately maintain a supply of decent food, whilst simultaneously having to pay bills.

Happiness doesn't have value?

Happiness is not quantitative.

Peace of mind doesn't have value?

Also not quantitative.

Levels of certain emotions can theoretically be determined by measuring the proportions of specific neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, etc.) in the brain, as well as by analyzing brain activity with equipment such as the fMRI, or the PET scan. But regardless, why does it matter if something is or is not quantitative?

Positive emotions are priceless. Anyway, this is getting more into the spectrum of philosophy than the topic at hand warrants.

You argued that only physical things are meaningful/have value, I simply responded to that. Now it seems that you have contradicted what you were saying before?

If I copy your deed and start living in your house, all I have done is copy information in order to justify my access to your property without needing your consent.

This isn't a matter of copyright law, it's a matter of fraud.

A point that naive made is that in many cases information does have value. He gave you a clear example of it.

Blah, I have all this shit to say, but it's really getting nowhere, so I'm just gonna spit out sources on shit.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201201 ... racy.shtml

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/

http://creativecommons.org/about

http://kopimi.com/kopimi/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-copyright

http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/

There's a ton of information out there.

What I'm really driving at here is that you can't stop file sharing without infringing on the basic rights of the people. It is absolutely economically feasible to compete against piracy and make a lot of money. Many businesses do this today. Massive companies like the RIAA and MPAA instead choose to bully and harass their customers and lobby incredibly unjust legislation in order to secure an absolute stranglehold on the market and destroy the rights of the individual.

The reasonable solution is to reform copyright law and for businesses to use piracy to their advantage, not fight something and kill the internet.

As far as theft is concerned, if you wanna say that my piracy is stealing money from one of these companies, then sure, you can say that. I say their overconfidence in a demonstrably difficult to enforce law (that wasn't even designed to handle digital content in the first place) as a basis for their income is where the real culpability lies.

[naive]

^I agree with every word you said in that post Leo. The topic at hand was "is piracy stealing", not if piracy is justifiable or if things like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA are good. I don't believe private corporations should have nearly the power that they do already. I don't feel as though the internet should yield to centralization under virtually any circumstances, especially when it comes to censorship. The human brain would not censor its neurons from communicating each other, as the internet should not censor its users. Centralized censorship on the internet to me is akin to brain death. Morally, ethically, and fundamentally unacceptable. Even though I hold those views very close to my heart, I have to accept that you still should have some recourse over the privacy and ownership of your own information (which I view as property). I don't think that you should be able to shut down a website, but you should essentially be able to sue a competing business profiting off your work in civil courts. I also think that there should be much more limited time frames before information becomes public domain. Fair use should also be greatly expanded on. I truly believe that people can make more money  by embracing piracy to find out what people really desire and the best distribution methods, but it is up to those who own the information to choose on their own what to do with it. That's just freedom.

^I agree with every word you said in that post Leo. The topic at hand was "is piracy stealing", not if piracy is justifiable or if things like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA are good. I don't believe private corporations should have nearly the power that they do already. I don't feel as though the internet should yield to centralization under virtually any circumstances, especially when it comes to censorship. The human brain would not censor its neurons from communicating each other, as the internet should not censor its users. Centralized censorship on the internet to me is akin to brain death. Morally, ethically, and fundamentally unacceptable. Even though I hold those views very close to my heart, I have to accept that you still should have some recourse over the privacy and ownership of your own information (which I view as property). I don't think that you should be able to shut down a website, but you should essentially be able to sue a competing business profiting off your work in civil courts. I also think that there should be much more limited time frames before information becomes public domain. Fair use should also be greatly expanded on. I truly believe that people can make more money  by embracing piracy to find out what people really desire and the best distribution methods, but it is up to those who own the information to choose on their own what to do with it. That's just freedom.

I agree, but legal recourse needs to be limited and reasonable. Personally, I think it's a stretch to apply it to digital content, but that's me.

Fair use definitely needs to be expanded on.

As far as public domain is concerned, it definitely needs to come into effect sooner. The stuff that comes out today will never be seen in the public domain by anyone alive today under the current law. I'd personally like to see it set at 3 years with an optional 2 year extension.

[naive]

I personally would like to see things be forced into public domain either in a reasonable time frame, or when investment is doubled or something like that... Whichever comes first. The more valuable the tech, the less time it should remain in private hands. Crowdsourced investment groups that buy things into public domain would be awesome too. Say everyone donates to a pool, and then democratically select available technologies to fund and redistribute freely.

tbh is any torrent site asked me to pay like 20 a month for the shit i download i would not have a problem with it just like a good portion of the community that torrents or pirates shit would do just so we could help pay the wat ever fees there are i mean the companys arent smart enough to do this if they came out with a god site where it had every thing like tvshows moves etc. and all you had to pay was 20 a month do you know how much money they would make its insane

tbh is any torrent site asked me to pay like 20 a month for the shit i download i would not have a problem with it just like a good portion of the community that torrents or pirates shit would do just so we could help pay the wat ever fees there are i mean the companys arent smart enough to do this if they came out with a god site where it had every thing like tvshows moves etc. and all you had to pay was 20 a month do you know how much money they would make its insane

Pay $20? Nah. They just slap adverts on that shit and they're good to go. Pirate Bay gets like $1.50 per person on that or so, apparently.

[naive]

If it was only $20 to download anything from a place like the pirate bay *legally* though, it would be a hell of a deal.

If it was only $20 to download anything from a place like the pirate bay *legally* though, it would be a hell of a deal.

Yeah, it wouldn't be bad. That's why Netflix is so popular. I support service oriented business like that.