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165 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 30 Jul \ on: Piracy, intellectual property rights, sites like Anna's Archive - thoughts? FiresidePhilosophy
There's very little evidence that IP increases innovation (see Against Intellectual Monopolies).
The philosophical case is best articulated by Stephen Kinsella in Against Intellectual Property. I haven't read his new book, so maybe that's even better.
There are several business models that could work for creators. Kinsella discusses some.
It's worth noting that pretty much no one publishes public domain works as though they had written them. That seems to indicate there's not much incentive to do so, since it's completely legal.
When you say "no one publishes public domain works as though they had written them" - do you mean that nobody is publishing, say, Tom Sawyer, and pretending that they wrote it?
Would you think someone would be completely justified, and not committing any kind of moral error, in downloading and reading a pirated copy of The Bitcoin Standard?
(That's actually a bad example, because I saw on Twitter that Saifedean Ammous responded to somebody who tweeted about not having the money to buy a copy of The Bitcoin Standard. He said to feel free to pirate it, he doesn't have a problem with it.)
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When you say "no one publishes public domain works as though they had written them" - do you mean that nobody is publishing, say, Tom Sawyer, and pretending that they wrote it?
Yes. This is one of the concerns I hear authors express. They're worried that they'll write something great and someone else will just slap their name on it.
I don't think it's immoral to "pirate" content, but I make an effort to respect the wishes of the creators and compensate them for content that I value. If it's someone like Saifedean, who doesn't believe in IP, then it's just a matter of deciding if you'd like to support him financially.
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