We recently referenced it in a blog post entitled “How does Piracy Affect Artists?”, a discussion on the subject of digital piracy.

I already quoted the UK copyright law that puts it in plain text.

That law is completely flawed because it’s impossible to apply from a physical point of view.
You simply cannot own anything that is intangible unless you materialize it somehow. Then you can own that materialization.
You cannot change that no matter how hard you with for it. Too bad.

And what would that “something” be when it’s money that you happen to own?

You don’t happen to own money however. You still seem to be confused.
However usually what that money represents is a certain value in cash, like I’ve told you and like you’ve seemed to miss.
That in it’s place is a tangible representation of something of value the bank holds. Usually gold. But for a question of comfort, people will usually hand in goods of equal value in exchange for cash.
Do I really need to explain to you how the world works????

Right. Very intangible.

Still confused?
I’m giving up on you. You’re a lost cause.
Value is a inherent characteristic of tangible things.

That you’re able to use that money to buy tangible things doesn’t change that.

It changes everything!
Stop ignoring all the facts you’re given!
You’re able to buy tangible things exactly because money is the measurement of that exact value and you’re owed that value!

You still own whatever is in your bank account, not the things you might potentially at some future point buy with that money.

Never have I claimed otherwise. Don’t confuse yourself again please…

You’re even able to use that money to buy intangible things, like rights to recordings or money in a different currency for that matter.

Buying money is a redundant act. What you’re doing is converting from one measurement to a different one.
You still don’t seem to understand what money is. That’s a shame

The value of that currency can then fluctuate based on nothing but supply and demand of that currency itself,

Which is irrelevant. The currency is still a measuring of value despite the amount of value a unit of it measures.
Why do you keep bringing in unrelated issues to the topic just to confuse yourself?
It’s very clear you can’t comprehend a lot of simple topics so why confuse yourself with further stuff?

The law does not violate the laws of physics. The law doesn’t say you’ll be able to hold the song when you own it.

Which is irrelevant, it’s still impossible to own the intangible because of the physical properties of something intangible.
You still don’t understand this impossibility and keep basing your logic on false assumptions.

The law says you don’t NEED to be able to hold the song in order to own it.

It doesn’t matter what the law says, once again.
You can clearly own a pencil. You cannot own a song however.
It’s impossible.

It’s your theory of ownership that’s limited.

The only thing limited here is your comprehension abilities.

The idea was to illustrate that there’s nothing more “natural” and enforceable about owning physical property than there is about owning non-physical property.

Except the fact that it’s naturally impossible to own intangible stuff.
I gave you a ridiculous example to illustrate your claims, and you took it as truth. That just shows how ignorant you are of the situation.

In an anarchy, if you claim it and defend it, it’s yours.

Yeah and how would you defend a song again?

I’ve claimed no such thing.

Have you lost track of the conversation again?
Please remember your own claims:

Removing copyright would make payment for the work inherent producing a song, book or movie completely option

You very clearly claimed that work or time taken to produce something should be a guarantee for payment. That is not true at all.
I gave you an example of why it wasn’t. Because you seem to think that copyright gives legal protection against that, and that it seems to apply to all other businesses.
Which is another of your big misunderstandings.

If you hire someone the law even stipulates a minimum wage you’ll have to pay.

And now you confuse services with goods.
Good job. The ultimate nail in your coffin. You simply don’t understand anything that’s been discussed so far.
You’re confused about what the law protects and what copyright protects, and now this.
There’s just no point in arguing with such amount of cluelessness

There exists no business offering products for sale that doesn’t have the protection of law against having their customers take those same products for free.

Depends of what you mean for taking.
Stealing? Yes.
Manufacturing your own equivalent? Not really.
I don’t see IKEA hunting me down for making my own chairs.

If products are offered for free it’s a choice made by the producer, NOT the customer.

Except that I’m free to do whatever I want with my property. You still don’t understand that after so many times being told that.

And in that the case the real product is generally something else.

Why are you repeating the same mistake? I’ve given you two examples where it wasn’t.
Repetition won’t magically fix it buddy.

Only exceptions would be the situations where something is given away as pr

There are a lot more exceptions than that.
And pr is exactly the reason companies do it. Which is the same effect piracy has.

In the latter two cases it might again be more correct to say that the real product isn’t actually the basic software.

You still don’t understand the difference between goods and services…

Anyway, not really applicable to music, movies and books.

I guess it’s time to adapt then.
Staying in the wrong side of the market and blaming others for it is not a good strategy.

Hundreds of years of publishing proves you wrong.

How is that so? Are you just going to say that without any substance?

If ownership requires being able to hold the actual thing that you own then yes. Physicality is however completely irrelevant when it comes to ownership.
I already quoted the UK copyright law that puts it in plain text.

“You own something of value equal to the amount of money you have”

And what would that “something” be when it’s money that you happen to own? It’s not an iPhone, it’s not gold, it’s 1000$ in your bank account. You don’t own it any less because it’s intangible.

“if you have 1000$ in your bank account, that’s 1000$ of value in something that you own.”

Right. Very intangible. That you’re able to use that money to buy tangible things doesn’t change that. You still own whatever is in your bank account, not the things you might potentially at some future point buy with that money.
You’re even able to use that money to buy intangible things, like rights to recordings or money in a different currency for that matter.
The value of that currency can then fluctuate based on nothing but supply and demand of that currency itself, something we’ve just seen very clearly with bitcoins.
That’s all just buying and selling the intangible.

“Are you now claiming that the law can violate the laws of physics?”

The law does not violate the laws of physics. The law doesn’t say you’ll be able to hold the song when you own it. The law says you don’t NEED to be able to hold the song in order to own it.
It’s your theory of ownership that’s limited. There’s no reason to exclude intangible property.

“I did. You were just doing your usual thing of “I hit a wall, gotta find a new topic” thing once again.”

The idea was to illustrate that there’s nothing more “natural” and enforceable about owning physical property than there is about owning non-physical property.
In an anarchy, if you claim it and defend it, it’s yours.
In a civilized society we try to avoid the inconvenience and violence of that, so we have laws regulating ownership.

“Because you claimed that effort = compensation,”

I’ve claimed no such thing. You introduced Blackberries as a response to this statement:

There’s no other line of work or business where your work or products have no legal protection.

What does effort have to do with it? With the protection of work it might. If you hire someone the law even stipulates a minimum wage you’ll have to pay.
That’s not relevant for copyrighted products however, but the protection the law gives to any other business offering products for sale certainly is.
There exists no business offering products for sale that doesn’t have the protection of law against having their customers take those same products for free.
If products are offered for free it’s a choice made by the producer, NOT the customer.

“Some companies even give away their services/products willingly because, like in piracy, the benefits are evident.”

And in that the case the real product is generally something else. Only exceptions would be the situations where something is given away as pr, or in the case of software where you pay for support or as in certain computer games by buying in-game items or added functionality.

In the latter two cases it might again be more correct to say that the real product isn’t actually the basic software.
Anyway, not really applicable to music, movies and books.

“No because copyright applies to something of no economical value”

Hundreds of years of publishing proves you wrong.

Yep, which clearly means that when you own money, you own something intangible.

You still seem to be confused about the laws of physics.
You keep repeating the same mistake and ignoring the facts, you’re beyond repair…

I’ll say it one last time. It’s physically impossible to own intangibles.
You own something of value equal to the amount of money you have. Because that’s exactly what money’s measuring. The value of something tangible.

If that were not the case, money wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Not really, money is a representation of value, we agreed on that.

Which is a property inherent of tangible things.
Value by itself cannot exist and is therefore nothing.

Value isn’t in itself tangible and the value of any base unit of currency is based on faith. Nothing tangible there.

And once again you got confused in your own point.
The value of something is a completely sepparate thing from the value of a currency.

Thank you, that’s what I said. Cash is a representation of money and not the other way around as you claimed.

You seem to be confused. That was my point from the start. Money was always a measurement.
Cash however is a tangible representation the value of something.
Money is that measurement.

Two separate and different things.
The measurement isn’t exactly a representation, just like a measurement of 10m isn’t a representation of an actual 10m line in any sort of way.
If you can’t keep following your own train of thought, then refrain from writing.

Read what I’m writing before writing silly comments like that.

I did. You just aren’t self conscious to realize the mess you’re written.

If money would be a representation of gold, the value of money would be increasing and decreasing based on the value of gold.

C’mon again??
You seem to be confusing concepts left and right now.
I thought I already explained you several times what money is and you keep repeating the same mistakes.

for you to be able to claim that money would be a representation of any particular class of assets,

I never did.
That’s you getting very confused again.
It’s getting pointless at this point…

No, you DO own the money. If you have 1000$ in your bank account then that’s 1000$ that you own.

Nope, because they can’t simply give you money according to the laws of physics.
Sorry, maybe on a different universe you might be right but in here, if you have 1000$ in your bank account, that’s 1000$ of value in something that you own.
If you ask for that amount of money back they’ll give you something of that value, usually cash since it’s a good representation of something of equivalent value and easier to handle than a piece of gold or silver.

The intangible has to be stored on something physical in order to be preserved for posterity. This doesn’t make it tangible.

Finally!
Thank you very much for finally showing you don’t understand a simple concept as tangibility.
That finally shows how besides being proven wrong on about 6 or so points you were also arguing for the sake of arguing without having a clue of what you meant.
Now if you have had the spine to admit it since the beginning…

The song is not the cd. What the songwriter owns is the song.

Of course not. The song is part of the CD which is what constitutes an information good, which is what you can own. You cannot own the song because it’s physically impossible!
You have a sliver of sanity followed by long periods of blind ignorance… that’s the problem

“The ownership of a song is restricted by the laws of physics so you can’t even have it.”
If it’s given to you by law, then you can have it. It’s a property right like any other.

Are you now claiming that the law can violate the laws of physics?
Oh please outlaw gravity that would be awesome.
And while you’re at it, outlaw the 3rd law of thermodynamics so we can save the universe.

And why do you never read through a set of paragraphs to figure out which parts are there to illustrate something and which parts are the main point?

I did. You were just doing your usual thing of “I hit a wall, gotta find a new topic” thing once again.

Why bring Blackberries into the conversation then?

Because you claimed that effort = compensation, to which you were told that that’s not how the free market works and given a clear, recent example, of a situation where it’s applied.
You seem to have lost track of the topic at hand another time.

I’m pointing out that no business operates under conditions where it is legal for the customers to take the offered product for free.

And I’ve show you that such is not true. Some companies even give away their services/products willingly because, like in piracy, the benefits are evident.

Removing copyright would be like telling every potential Blackberry customer it’s now ok to take those phones for free.

No because copyright applies to something of no economical value while blackberry, not only being something of limited supply, is something unaffected by copyright.
Blackberry sales follow the free market. Copyright functions outside of it.
I think you’ve managed to miss the point of about 90% of your paragraphs.
That’s probably a new record.

That’s actually a very flawed comparison, typical from you.

Yep, which clearly means that when you own money, you own something intangible.

“What I said is that money was a representation of something tangible, which is true.”

Not really, money is a representation of value, we agreed on that. Value isn’t in itself tangible and the value of any base unit of currency is based on faith. Nothing tangible there.

“Money is a measurement of Value and cash is a representation of that value.”

Thank you, that’s what I said. Cash is a representation of money and not the other way around as you claimed.

“So besides breaking the law of physics you’re now going to break basic economic concepts?”

Read what I’m writing before writing silly comments like that.

“You’ge getting confused in your own thoughts again…”

Or then you’re getting confused by them. If money would be a representation of gold, the value of money would be increasing and decreasing based on the value of gold.

Gold is valued in money, but for you to be able to claim that money would be a representation of any particular class of assets, the value of money has to be tied to that asset. That’s specifically not happening with fiat currencies.

“You don’t own the money you own something of equivalent value which can be used as an exchange.”

No, you DO own the money. If you have 1000$ in your bank account then that’s 1000$ that you own.

“Because you cannot own something that’s not tangible.
That’s why there are information goods. Because otherwise it would be impossible to own those intangible things.”

The intangible has to be stored on something physical in order to be preserved for posterity. This doesn’t make it tangible. The song is not the cd. What the songwriter owns is the song.

“The ownership of a song is restricted by the laws of physics so you can’t even have it.”

If it’s given to you by law, then you can have it. It’s a property right like any other.

“Why the hell are you shifting the topic again?”

And why do you never read through a set of paragraphs to figure out which parts are there to illustrate something and which parts are the main point?

“No one has claimed that you can take a blackberry for free.”

Why bring Blackberries into the conversation then? I’m pointing out that no business operates under conditions where it is legal for the customers to take the offered product for free.
Removing copyright would be like telling every potential Blackberry customer it’s now ok to take those phones for free.
That is the relevant comparison.

Flawed.

This doesn’t make money itself tangible, which was the point.

Actually it’s not flawed at all.
Intangibles are physically impossible to own.
You can, however, own something tangible and represent it by something intangible giving the illusion of ownage of the representation.
But unless you can bend the laws of physics that’s as far as it goes.

Don’t be too quick to claim flawed without any way to back it up.
I never said that money was tangible by the way. What I said is that money was a representation of something tangible, which is true.
That all came because you said you can own an intangible stuff and I showed you the only case in which that’s possible and that a song isn’t one of those, then I asked for an example and you brought a flawed one: Money.

So will you finally bring in a decent example or are you going to keep repeating something flawed hoping it sticks?

Money can’t be a representation of cash. In that case the 100$ bill would be worth only as much as the paper it’s printed on, and it would be equal in value to a 20$ bill.

Why do you keep repeating the same mistakes?
Didn’t I already tell you how this was wrong?
Money is a measurement of Value and cash is a representation of that value. That cash is worth that value and not the material costs. Obviously. Otherwise you could apply the same to pretty much any other object.
So besides breaking the law of physics you’re now going to break basic economic concepts?

Money also can’t be a representation of gold. In that case the value of money would be following the value of gold and our purchasing power would increase as the value of gold increases.

You’ge getting confused in your own thoughts again…

Money is a representation of pure value.

Ah now you finally get it? Typical of you to play the dumb card….

It is ownable independently of any tangible asset.

Not true.
What you own is something of equivalent value to that measurement. That’s the reason why money existed in the first place!
Or are you now ok with trading items for other items despite being against that a few posts before?

It’s value is also independent of any tangible asset.

See? more cluelessness. The value of money?
Money by itself is value. And value has to be applied to tangible things, otherwise it doesn’t even exist!
That something is usually gold.

The only function it has is to provide a unit of comparison between various assets, both tangible and intangible.

Ah see? Now you’re using it as something inherent of physical things!
That’s precisely what you don’t want to admit! No need to add intangible things because the second part is just not true. You can’t own intangible things, thats where all this money talk began from and you kindly avoided it when you hit a wall. Typical.

When you own money you own the intangible.

Repeating the same lie thrice won’t make it true.
You don’t own the money you own something of equivalent value which can be used as an exchange. Because said exchange wouldn’t be practical, you just deduct that value from your account and add it to someone else’s effectively avoiding to bring the object of value to the trade.

Don’t make me repeat myself again. It’s not my fault you’re dense as heck but at least keep it to yourself.

Please come back when you acknowledge the role society plays in granting property rights to various things.

So is society above the laws of physics?
Because you cannot own something that’s not tangible.
That’s why there are information goods. Because otherwise it would be impossible to own those intangible things.
That’s what you don’t seem or want to understand. And resorting to blatant shift of burden of proof seems like your last resort to a lost argument.

The ownership of a song is not restricted to the specific copy the songwriter happens to have.

Ofcourse.
The ownership of a song is restricted by the laws of physics so you can’t even have it.
You have other stuff like a monopoly on distribution, but you most certainly don’t own the song.
You don’t own other people’s copies either for obvious reasons. You can and do own yours however.
That’s how it is.

“What would you do? Beat the song out of someone? And then how would you own it?”

Actually, yes.

Sorry to break this to you but that would be physically impossible.
You don’t seem to grasp basic laws of physics or even what owning means. I told you not to comment on those until you had any clue of what you were talking about.

In an anarchic society intellectual property

That’s beyond the point.
But in an archaic society there wouldn’t be IP to begin with. That’s your biggest misconception.

anyone who’d decide to claim ownership of a song would have to have the manpower necessary to collect levies

Why the hell are you shifting the topic again?
No one ever claimed someone was trying to own or steal ownership of a song.
You seem to have lost track of the topic at hand another time.

Yes, seriously. Not one single Blackberry customer has the right to take Blackberry products for free.

Have you missed the point a fourth time?
Damn that’s terrible of you.
No one has claimed that you can take a blackberry for free.

Flawed.

This doesn’t make money itself tangible, which was the point.

Money can’t be a representation of cash. In that case the 100$ bill would be worth only as much as the paper it’s printed on, and it would be equal in value to a 20$ bill.

Money also can’t be a representation of gold. In that case the value of money would be following the value of gold and our purchasing power would increase as the value of gold increases.

Money is a representation of pure value. It is ownable independently of any tangible asset. It’s value is also independent of any tangible asset. The only function it has is to provide a unit of comparison between various assets, both tangible and intangible.

When you own money you own the intangible.

“You can say you own a song all you want, but you’ll just sound ridiculous since it’s phisically impossible to do so.
You can own a copy of it, a CD with it, a score with it written. But those are all physical, ownable representations of something intangible, the song.

Please come back only when you’ve acknowleged basic laws of physics.”

Please come back when you acknowledge the role society plays in granting property rights to various things.
The ownership of a song is not restricted to the specific copy the songwriter happens to have.

[IP in an anarchic society]
“What would you do? Beat the song out of someone? And then how would you own it?”

Actually, yes. In an anarchic society intellectual property would have to be protected the same as way as any physical property would have to be, by force. That would mean anyone who’d decide to claim ownership of a song would have to have the manpower necessary to collect levies from anyone performing the song under threat of violence. It would be very impractical, but not impossible. In a geographically limited way, of course.
Basically the only thing “natural” about any property is that we have a sense of “that’s mine”. And from that pov tangible property isn’t any different from intangible property.
The various property rights are something enacted by society in order to secure property without the need for violence.

[There's no other line of work or business where your work or products have no legal protection.]

“Seriously?
Blackberry worked really hard on their products yet, it was no guarantee for payment.
And pretty much the same goes for all companies and businesses whose only profit comes from services and goods.”
Yes, seriously. Not one single Blackberry customer has the right to take Blackberry products for free. That protection is extended to every single provider of goods or services everywhere.
No reason that protection shouldn’t be there for art.