Comment on Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 8 months agoIt just seems that what you are saying is that people shouldn’t be paid if their work doesn’t create something physical.
Comment on Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 8 months agoIt just seems that what you are saying is that people shouldn’t be paid if their work doesn’t create something physical.
gapbetweenus@feddit.de 8 months ago
Nope, that’s not what I’m saying. I just make a difference between copying, stealing, physical goods, digital goods and immaterial things. They are not the same.
Easy examples: original and copy does not really apply to digital works or two people on opposite sides of world can have the same thought but not have the same physical object at the same time, etc.
Katana314@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Please name for me something someone could create on a computer, that you would agree they should be paid for; even if they show a demonstration copy to someone.
gapbetweenus@feddit.de 8 months ago
What ever they can find someone to pay for. I my self pay or use legally free software for my work. I just do t think that if someone pirates a copy of adobe cs it’s equivalent to theft of a physical good. Completely ok in my book for private use a bit shady for commercial use - but adobe subscription model is shady in my book anyway.
Katana314@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So…say you like to use Sublime Text. And you pay for a premium license. How do you know the person you paid is the person who wrote Sublime Text?
In fact, let’s suppose one day you go online and it seems there are hundreds of excellent open source IDEs, all of which look a lot like Sublime Text, with different names. Who deserves the credit? It could be theorized that each of the authors you’re looking at DID pay for their initial copy; and since software is free to use in any way you like, it’s free to sell its use, right?
The above is not a problem in our world where the code of the application in question is the intellectual property of its original author - that even when he makes it open source, he retains the rights to put a donation/premium button in the help menu.
I’d still like a direct answer; what goods can most normal people produce on a computer that, absent intellectual property laws, they could still commonly sell? I’d also question what would be the path for highly niche specializations where, currently their work sells for high prices due to the constrain on supply. If everyone worked off of a FOSS donation model, they likely would not have so many four-digit donators.