I am in agreement completely with Jon's post on libertarian violence. Unless you are a promoter of some theory about natural law (which I view as the gussied-up equivalent of a street corner preacher) there's no basis for your property rights other than a social consensus that property rights work, and no way to defend those rights without going to jail other than by calling on that social consensus.
One thing I also am is a passionate defender of the notion that intellectual property isn't property, or particularly intellectual. If I steal your intellectual property, I haven't deprived you of anything, because you still have your copy. Stealing movies off BitTorrent is, therefore, not stealing.
Unfortunately the imagery many people who agree with me use here is "If I steal your bicycle I've taken your ability to use the bicycle. If I copy your music, you've lost nothing and still can enjoy your own copy. You've only been deprived of the value of some labor that you have to embrace Marx's Labor Theory of Value to put a price on. In fact I've done you a favor because if I like it I might buy the album."
This is a bad analogy, because what if your bicycle is rusty and has two flat tires and you were never, ever, planning to use it again and you left your garage open? If I take it, that's still theft, right? Most people would say yes. Hence the anti-IP libertarian is hoist on his own petard. If depriving you of something you never meant to use again can still be theft, maybe stealing music is stealing.
But if you understand that theft is just a matter of social consensus this becomes easier. Why is it theft to take your rusty bicycle and not theft to copy your music? Because it works that it should be, and therefore we should be able to get most of our fellow citizens to agree that it is.
The argument from popularity is a logical fallacy and a hell of a way to run a civilization ("Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son"). Yet here we are.
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