it's very simple. trying to apply the concept of property to information is unnatural and has hindered human progress more than it has helped. Information is not like physical property, which is limited in supply. In fact it doesn't even really exist. To tell me that having the atoms on MY hard drive or MY ink molecules on MY paper arranged in a certain pattern is absurd. I'm not depriving anyone of anything by doing this. I am the one being deprived by not being allowed to arrange them how I wish.

To try to own information is like trying to own a flame. I lit your candle with my candle, so I own the flame on your candle. Making a copy is the same. To claim you own the copy is just plain stupid.

This is a weird argument.

Information can be any collection of bits. You can copy these easily and almost for free.

But almost nobody cares about information in the abstract. I'm talking about specific, artful arrangements of bits. Lots of effort goes into making sequences of bits. (we can give our sequence of bits names like "The Lion King" or "Windows 98"). You only want a copy of these bits because of the effort that went into it.

Of course nobody can control how you flip the bits on your hard drive in practice, but that's missing the point. It's a particular arrangement of bits that you find entertaining or informative or useful, somebody put a lot of work into making it that way, and it's this creative effort that you end up enjoying and paying for, not the actual bits.

And of course you are depriving the artists of something - a royalty payment. The art was likely created with a view to that royalty payment. Which is why you want to pirate it in the first place. You want to enjoy the creative work without having to shell out for it.

You can come up with elaborate arguments about information theory, but in the end this is what it comes down to - pirates want other people to create value for them, for free, and will howl about "corporations" and "information wants to be free" to try and justify it.

How much effort they went into selecting that particular set of bits is of no consequence to the state afterward. If someone made a million dollar machine that lights a flame, it does not make subsequent flames lit from the original flame any more valuable. Same goes for air or water, which are all deadly important, but as they are also virtually infinite in supply, they have no cost. Nestle is of course trying to change that with water.

I don't owe artists any royalties just because they say so. If they demand a kiss they won't get it either. I won't be bound by arbitrary restrictions around the physical matter in my possession.

> I don't owe artists any royalties just because they say so. If they demand a kiss they won't get it either. I won't be bound by arbitrary restrictions around the physical matter in my possession.

There's a lot of "me me me" in this. If you want to live in a lawless society where morality revolves only around what is physically possible, that might be possible on some remote island; but don't be surprised if nobody on that island bothers to build any million dollar flame-lighting machines for your benefit.

I concur with u/colordrops 100%.