...how do you answer ANY breach of physical property if you don't "find out" about it?
You do find out about it, actually, because most private property is exclusive and rivalrous while ideas are the opposite.
...so, if I'm a beggar on the street in winter time and steal another beggar's blanket in order to have a blanket I haven't actually stolen anything at all! How nice.
Dishonesty is unbecoming of you. Clearly, St. Thomas is talking about taking a blanket from someone of property, who won't miss the blanket.
...I find this claim utterly fascinating... and also entirely unproveable. Or for that matter, unfalsifiable, which is basically the same thing.
Most claims are. Including the ones you guys are making about intellectual property.
...You mean medieval peasents DEFINITIVELY did NOT have arguments over which bards telling of King Arthur or Beowulf or which ever story it happened to be was better/more accurate? They DEFINITIVELY did NOT have shipping wars? Really? Wow. Can I see your time machine?
No, fandoms as organized subcultures didn't exist until the 19th century. The Sherlock Holmes fandom was considered to be
"the dawn of fandom as we know it."
No, I would equate it to entering into a neighbor's property unknowingly and taking an apple from the apple tree they planted somehow thinking it was completely "natural" for an apple tree to be growing in the woods. In other words, stealing.
Apples are exclusive and rivalrous. Ideas are exactly the opposite of that. Furthermore, ideas are available to pretty much everyone, everywhere, at any time. The apple tree is on a certain person's property.
And this is different from any other form of theft how? I mean, the entire point of being a good thief is to take another's property without them noticing.
You will eventually notice this because the item exists in physical reality. Your story is an idea, so it doesn't. This is the primary distinction I'm relying on.
Perhaps this childish cartoon can demonstrate the concept better than I can.
Yes, as I believe that a person taking and using something produced by another without compensation for their time and labor is, at best, stealing. When a person adds on an entitled attitude and attempts to reframe the matter as people expecting payment for services rendered or goods produced as them somehow being immoral, then they move into being nothing more than a slaver, as they are basically demanding that another person labor for them without compensation.
So I'm a slaver now? But wait, what is this nonsense about patrons being the slavers of artists? Was that just rhetoric, or do really believe it to be true?
I'm honestly not sure how to prove this to you. If you've never come up with stories or ideas on your own in your imagination, it's honestly not something I can explain. Also, you cannot define that of which I believe, which you are doing here. You're basically saying that I cannot believe what I'm outright saying to you, in other words, you are saying I am a liar for saying that I believe there is such a thing as individual creativity. A nice trick, I might add, since it basically makes your position falsifiable. I cannot prove there is original creativity because I'm lying when I say I believe there is such a thing.
So, what evidence is sufficient to prove that someone can create original works? Do they have to invent an entirely new language from the ground up in order to write a story in? Since if they don't you could then argue that, after all, words are ideas and weren't created by them and thus a story told in an already existing language is inherently a communal creation simply because it is told using language. At what point does something qualify as "original" to you?
To prove me wrong, you'd have to prove that Thomas Hobbes and the Romantics were right and the theory of intertextuality as developed by modern literary theorists is wrong.
The idea of the "author" can be traced back to Hobbes,
who said "A person is he ‘whose words or actions are considered, either as his own or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing, to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction.’ When they are considered as his own, then is he called a ‘natural person’; and, when they are considered as representing the words and actions of another, then is he a ‘feigned’ or ‘artificial person.’"
After this development in the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century saw a change in the concept of "author." See, prior to this, the "author" was seen as the marriage of two dissimilar concepts from the Renaissance era. First, the author was a "craftsman" who adhered to a body of rules and who manipulated traditional materials in ways that satisfied the audience of the court. Second, the author occasionally was seen to rise above those requirements and to achieve something "higher," something that was attributed to a muse, or even God.
As Martha Woodsmansee writes:
Eighteenth-century theorists departed from this compound model of writing in two significant ways. They minimized the element of craftsmanship (in some instances they simply discarded it) in favor of the element of inspiration, and they internalized the source of that inspiration. That is, inspiration came to be regarded as emanating not from outside or avove, but from within the writer himself. "Inspiration" came to be explicated in terms of original genius, with the consequence that the inspired work was made peculiarly and distinctively the product - and the property - of the writer.
This idea of "original genius" replaced the earlier idea of the author being a mere vehicle for ideas. And when you look at the legal battles in eighteenth-century Britain that formalized copyright law, you noticed that they were strongly influence by these Enlightenment notions of what constituted originality, authorship, and ownership. Locke's idea of property rights was (mis)applied to intellectual property as a result of this idea of original genius. Just as one mixes their labor with materials found in nature to create their property, an author's "property" becomes "his" own when he stamps his personality on the work, and "originality" is the deciding factor.
So it seems to me that this idea of "original genius" seems to have been an invention of seventeenth century Europe, one that did not exist before. This premise upon which intellectual property is justified not only completely contradicts how we understood what authors were beforehand but how cultural production operates not only in pre-modern Europe but around the world today! If you can provide some reason to why this theory is wrong besides "well, that's not how my personal subjective experience works," I'd like to see it. Again, I'm basing my theory on contemporary literary scholarship. What are you basing yours on?
See, here's the fundamental problem with you adopting this concept: it's again axiomatic. As others pointed out, it's non-falsifiable based on evidence. You proposed an non-testable academic theory to support your assertion that older works were of higher quality than modern works. I countered that point with a testable theory. Your academic theory quite nicely fits with your axiomatic belief, but outside of that axiom, it in no ways provides actual evidence. You call me out for making a genetic fallacy, but you're actually wrong, you made the first logical fallacy by engaging in an Appeal to Authority. My attacking the Frankfurt school as founded in Marxism and the numerous areas Marxist theory has gotten wrong therefore is not a genetic fallacy, but rather a dismissal of your appeal to authority by me rejecting the authority of the people you are using to support your assertion.
Further, you never even ENGAGED with my proposition of the "Time Filter" as a legitimate explanation for the idea that creative products of the past were of higher quality than modern. Did you even look at the list of 1960's top 40 songs? Have you yet to encounter the time filter in your own life via the nostalgia for certain higher quality media from your youth while forgetting massive amounts of other media you consumed?
Because the idea that the quality of cultural output has gone over time is entirely unfalsifiable! Yes, you can point to certain genres of music going downhill in quality like "pop", but that does not mean that ALL music has gone downhill, that's a single, albeit very dominate, genre. How much of "classical" music from the heyday of it's prime has been lost and forgotten? We have no idea, because we lack records of all the music composed and performed in that era. Likewise we have no idea what the popular music of the Middle Ages even WAS nor how many songs or stories were lost simply because they were not preserved because they were simply not good enough to be. That is, unless you have a time machine you've been holding out on us...
This is wrong on so many levels.
First, you don't know what an
axiom is. I argued for both culture industry as being true based on the Marxist theory of commodity fetishization under capitalism, which I did defend earlier when I pointed out a lot of the language used in modern capitalist societies (such as "selling your brand" or whatnot). And if I'm arguing for something, it's not an axiom, because an axiom is something you assume to be true.
Second, I'm not sure what you mean by "falsifiability." Sure, you can't test my hypothesis in a laboratory by looking under a microscope. But my theory is based on general phenomenon that's happening around me as well as contemporary literary theory and philosophy. We're talking about history and philosophy, neither of which are physical sciences. If you have a problem with that, I'd suggest you stop having this discussion.
Third, your theory isn't "testable" in a laboratory. You pointed to one historical phenomenon that took place in the twentieth century, extrapolated it over time, and made a statement that you couldn't have possibly gotten from the data alone. Both of our theories look at the same data and come to different conclusions. If you are going to do this, you need to actually tell me why the historical data
Fourth, your entire argument involving filtration is complete non-sequitur! When I stated that "culture industry is the best explanation of why good things aren't made anymore" and you say "but my theory says bad things from the past have disappeared over time," that's a non-sequitur! Your theory cannot account for why there are no modern Beethovens, no modern Shakespeares, etc.
Fifth and finally, your idea that I don't engage with any of your theories is bogus considering how many mistakes I've had to correct, mistakes in your own reasoning. Like how I corrected you on what I believe about the Enlightenment. Or how you claimed that, because the Enlightenment took place after copyright law was established, I was wrong to attribute it to the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, I've been more than willing to admit every single one of the mistakes in my thinking, as when you corrected me on those songs being folk songs or when I didn't know of a recent copyright victory for public domain in the case of Happy Birthday or when I apologized to
@LordsFire and all the others who I've insulted when you pointed that out.
Overall, I've been about as accommodating and honest as I reasonably could be and have been treated poorly by you in kind. I think easing up on the accusations of "not providing evidence!" and preferably NOT misrepresenting what I say would be a good thing for everyone involved.
'The Name of Love,' I have to point something out now:
The more you argue, the less appealing you make your position. You have had specific points of evidence you raise repeatedly proven to support the opposite of your position, you're blatantly basing argument on 'this is how I personally define things to be' positions, and trying to insist everybody else argue based on those assertions.
And repeatedly ignoring both evidence that runs directly contrary to your assertions, and treating your assertions as unfalsifiable.
In short, you come across as someone who made up their mind, and now comes in with an attitude of 'damn the facts, I've already made up my mind.' I don't think I've once seen you admit that any evidence impinges on your arguments; you just discard the disproven argument, and pick up another like the prior one only mattered so long as it supported your position, rather than worked against it.
Combining that with your authoritarian streak paints a bleak picture of what would happen if you ever got your hands on any significant amount of power over others
I have to point out something now.
You have been ignoring what I've written. I've provided copious evidence from contemporary literature and conceded where I was wrong whenever it has been brought up.
And frankly, you have been rather unfair to me. Calling me a dogmatist when I already pointed out how you were wrong. Calling me an authoritarian when my critique of copyright law has been developed primarily from arguments from libertarians, various Pirate Party-type Leftists, and literary and history intellectuals, none of whom are particularly known for their support of autocracy.
I kindly ask that you apologize. I've already apologized for calling you a rent-seeker in the heat of anger and will do so again here.
I am heartily sorry for calling you a rent-seeker for profiting from copyright.
I hope you realize that what you've written here is also a result of your rage and own up to it.
If you'd like to discuss my politics - whether or not I am "authoritarian" - check out
this thread. I created it to talk to others about the differences in what rights or freedoms ought to be allowed to the public. If you continue to be unreasonable, I'll be forced to ignore you, and I don't want to have to do that. Not after I just un-ignored all of the people involved in the pornography debate last year. I'd like to understand you, and I'd like you to understand me.