Originally Posted by
Saracen
Speaking as someone who had "imaginary property" stolen, I say that's rubbish.
I write for a living. I'm not a multi-billion pound corporation, I'm a bloke trying to put food on the table and pay bills. One of my "imaginary property" rights is that I control when and where my work is used, and am entitled to get paid when it does.
So when one of those large companies rips off my work by publishing it in Australia, then remove my ability to do so because buyers usually want first serial rights, and certainly, subsequent publications are less valuable, if they actually retain any value at all.
These days, many publishers want "all rights". That is, all locations, all media types, first and subsequent use. Guess what? I'll agree to that [b]IF[/i] the rate paid reflects that. So I get paid a bit more, per word, so that a publisher does have the right to use my material, in a way I don't have the resources or intention to exploit, such as translation into German, or Italian, etc.
That Australian company that "stole" my rights directly deprived me of income .... which is why they paid up and apologised when they got caught.
Without those "imaginary" rights, I could not make a living from writing, because doing so requires investment, in equipment but especially in time. And that applies to a LOT of others, too. Those rights are absolutely essential for me to make a living from my sweat and toil.
Should a carpenter be made unable to make a living from making furniture, because greedy people think they can just take his work without paying anything for it?
The ONLY difference is between physical, tangible goods and 'intellectual' goods. Take either without consent or compensation to the owner and you take their ability to earn from their work. If people are prepared to buy a darpenter's furniture, and buy my writing, why shouldxI be prevenred from earning a living from it? Clearly, my writing has inherent value, or publishers wouldn't be prepared to pay for it. And I can tell you for a certainty that they DO NOT buy from just any old Tom, Dick or Harry that approaches them, because not everybody has the skills necessary to produce work of sufficient quality, jyst like the carpenter's ability to sell a chair, and the amount he gets for it, depends on the quality of the chair, the quality of his carpentry skills.
So, chair or creative 'art', what's the difference? Both have value, both time time and effort to produce. If you could take that carpenter's chair, stick it in a Star Trek replicator and produce 5 more at the push of a button, do you not remove the carpenter's ability to earn from making 6 chairs?
The difference is the same. Copying technology.
What is also the same is the greed and moral bankruptcy of the pirates that want the benefit of someone else's skills and efforts, without wanting to pay for it.