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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: OT: copyright again
Message-ID: <G3uvIu.D5z@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 10:23:18 GMT
References: <39ed17bd.2348171@news.gte.net> <TGgO5.7025$FU3.1724479@ptah.visi.com> <IJGO5.185130$4d.28834727@news02.optonline.net> <3a0b59ef.374229741@goliath2.usenet-access.com>
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Carl Muckenhoupt <carl@wurb.com> wrote:
><lrsFive(repl_Five_by_5)@optonline.net> wrote:
>>"David Thornley" <thornley@visi.com> wrote in message
>>> If I copy a CD, then the guy who had the copyright is not directly
>>> affected.  I have created value, since if I have copied a $500
>>> program I have created an object worth $500.
>>
>>Lives in a world all his own, folks.
>
>Hardly.  I agree with his logic.  If a CD is worth $500, then a copy
>of the same CD is surely also worth $500 - otherwise, the company
>selling "official" copies is just as fraudulent as the "pirate".

Nonsense.  "If a CD is worth $500, then one billion copies
of the same CD are worth $500 billion."?!  It's only worth
what people will pay for it, and the intersection of supply
and demand curves implies that the more copies of something
exist, the less each one is worth individually.

In other words, every pirated copy devalues the original
copies.  Thus the original claim "the guy who had the copyright
is not directly affected" is true due to "directly affected",
but the whole thing is pretty irrelevant since he is negatively
affected indirectly.  (And I have no clue what the point of these
claims is in the original context, but the argument is getting
silly.)

It is perfectly legal--and while some may dispute the morality
of it, I have trouble seeing it as *obviously* morally flawed--
to make something intentionally scarce so as to increase its
value.  And to address the moral issue, if the Mona Lisa is worth
say $100M dollars, an identical-down-to-the-molecular-level copy
of the Mona Lisa (so nobody can tell the two apart anymore) is not
worth $100M.  Indeed, the total value of the two may be
*under* $100M due to the lack of uniqueness.  (Would 100,000
copies still be worth $1000 each?)  If it were immoral to
intentionally make something scarce, would it then be
immoral to prevent exact molecular copying of the Mona Lisa
at the time such technology becomes available?  (No doubt there
are still some people who would say "yes", but I think we're
clearly getting down to a very tiny fraction of people.)
