brute is not 100% sure how electricity works, but isn't jacob stealing electrons in this example? it's more akin to "stealing" brute's cable by splicing it, and enjoying the same 300 premium channels without paying for it - brute doesn't lose anything and might not even notice.jacob wrote:So by the same logic, I could tap Brute's electricity since technically the wires are still there and thus I haven't really removed any atoms from Brute's home. Of course one could argue that one is stealing the effort of the power plant in the same way that one is stealing the effort of the musician but apparently that would be absurdBRUTE wrote: this is why the idea of "stealing music" online is absurd - it is just copied. for stealing to occur, something must be missing.
or jacob breathing brute's air by standing right next to him when there's plenty of air all around (of course this would be different in a situation where air is scarce - say smoggy beijing or the ISS).
the point is that humans' concept of property was invented to solve distribution problems for scarce resources. using the same concept on non-scarce digital resources is intellectually lazy and nonsensical. IP is absurd and a major threat to creativity.