You're taking someone's work (scene groups), and selling it for a profit. how is that not low?

There are no good examples of state-run ANYTHING

I was impressed by the TED video too.

My first question was "Do you think an individual has the right to defend himself against aggression?" and your first answer was "No". Am I misunderstanding something?


By this same logic... when slavery was legal, a slave that ran away was aggressing against his master, who had a rightful claim the slave ignored. Do you agree with this? If not, what's the difference?


I don't know about you, but if armed men come to my house and threaten me with imprisonment, I consider that an act of aggression. I never agreed to the terms you placed upon the use of your idea.

According to Libertarianism, no. According to the current laws, yes. The law used to be that you could own black people. I guess you would have supported that back then too, huh?

Yet, once it does exist, it's no longer scarce. Unfortunately, you can't own something that doesn't exist yet so that doesn't help you at all. The paper the blueprints are printed on would still be scarce but not the content therein. This seems pretty simple so maybe you are trying very hard not to understand?

The way I read your answers, it appears that you feel an individual does not have the right to defend himself from aggression. This is equivalent to stating that individuals do not have a right to live. Is this what you believe?

Based on this interpretation of my answers, here is how I see the situation playing out.

I infringe on your copyright. When you find out, you respond by notifying me of the fine you have levied. Since I don't agree that I have done anything wrong, I ignore the fine. In response, you send men with guns to my house to extract the fine by force if necessary. Seeing this as an invasion and threat to my life, I defend myself from the men, killing some and driving the rest off.

This is where it gets confusing, because you have stated both that I do not have the right to defend myself, but also that they do not have the right to kill me. Only one of us can be the aggressor, who is it?

As far as your question, bitcoin2cash answered it the same way I would have.

Correct, but it's the fact that I can't possibly use it, even if I don't want to. That's what makes it scarce. That's what makes it ownable. Once I own it, I get to control the use of it, even if I'm not using it all the time. Of course, this assumes that things have objectively defined uses, which is false. Maybe I collect beds. Maybe I derive joy from knowing I have a clean bed with pristine sheets on it. In that sense, I'm always using it and you would be depriving me of something just by laying on it. However, as mentioned already, that's irrelevant.

If you support the use of force against individuals that make use of your ideas against your will, you ultimately support killing them.

Do you think an individual has the right to defend himself against aggression?

Do you think you have the right to fine me for infringing on your copyright?

Do you think you have the right to send armed men to my house if I don't pay your fine?

Do you think those men have the right to kill me if I defend myself against them?

Can you answer my question regarding a world where physical goods are as easy to copy as intellectual goods? Does it make sense that the above escalation of force is justified if I copy your lawnmower?

Because we both cannot use your property at the same time (thus, if I were to use it against your will, I would deprive you of its use). We can both use your idea at the same time, so I can use it against your will without depriving you of its use. You don't seem to realize that the reason theft is bad is because it deprives the rightful owner of its use.

Think about it this way. If we could make copies of physical things as easily as we could information, there would be no need for property rights. If you had a lawnmower and I made a copy of it, have I diminished your use of the lawnmower in any way? Perhaps you sell lawnmowers... well, it's kind of dumb to try to sell copies of things that can easily be copied. Should you be able to kill me in order to stop me from copying your lawnmowers?

Intellectual property is just as stupid.

First you have to show that ideas are possessions. Likewise, you want to make me your slave by forcing me to pay you for using my property in a certain way.

That's not what is meant by scarcity in this sense. Think of a hammer - if I'm using it, you can't use it. Does that same statement apply to a story, or a song, or any other idea?

Just answer the questions... why do you have the right to control the use of your ideas? Why does that right supersede my right to liberty?

Time is not scarce in the economic sense, in fact it doesn't make sense to say that you and I "can't use the same time" or "can use the same time". I did not force you to share your ideas, you did it of your own volition. You have made no argument that you have the right to control the use of your ideas after you share them.

If I felt I had a right to your time, I would make you my slave or take your possessions.

Ideas, or "ideal objects" are not scarce in the economic sense. Wood is scarce because you and I can't use the same wood at the same time. A story, song, piece of software (etc) are not scarce because you and I can use them at the same time.

That is simply false. There is still the incentive for the enjoyment of creating, becoming famous from creating, selling live performances, donations, etc. There are people that wish to create but can't because you can't use characters from existing works for fear of lawsuits. So it seems to me that even though there will be some discouragement to some people there will be encouragement to others. Which outweighs which? Do you have anything to offer aside from your gut feelings?

I would also like to add that we have a plethora of real world examples of free (as in free speech) intellectual creations being created and quite often working out better than commercialized intellectual creations. We have loads of free software for example, and not many computer scientists would argue that msdos is a better kernel than linux. We also have wikipedia that accumulated around 16 million USD of donations last year. So not only are people willing to give away there time for free in doing tasks that benefit the community as a whole but also, people are willing to give them money for doing so.
I would also like to point out - although this can be considered a subjective opinion I suppose - that intellectual works made with only money as an incentive (e.g. most big movies) are plain crap since their goal is not the expression of an artistic vision from the creator but just creating as much money as possible by pleasing the evermore stupid crowd of people who will buy it.

Harm to you personally or society as a whole? If it's the latter then I'd really love to see some kind of argument for that. The burden of proof is on you.