[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Gimple

whereas your argument can be used to support a scenario in which one doctor has the cure for a disease and noone else does, but instead of sharing it he patents it and profits of the few who can afford to pay for his cure

which is why your argument is popular

the argument is popular within capitalism because that's how capitalism works.

i didn't invent capitalism, i just live in it. would i like a different system? sure. what is it? i don't see it-- i ony see the historical nightmares from broken utopias.

there are a few people who devote their lives to the service of others but those are few and far between. most people are pigs, and work mostly for self-interest. very sad, but true. i'm not championing selfishness by the way, i just observe it everywhere. read brecht's the good soul of szechuan.

and so the information born of self-interest is often better developed because it has the economic resources for that development.

take linux-- it's great, but if it was so great everyone would use it. as it is, only geeks do. i tried it, but holy shit what a pain in the ass it was. even the simplest upgrade was a headache.

so now i use osx-- which derives from unix but it's easy even for a moron to use. and so it's worth money.

the open source movement is still a good thing though, except that it's not disinterested-- it's a prestige market. you get paid in fame points and then cash them in for jobs/contracts/investors. every open source monk will burn their robes at the first sign of big money.

i don't think file sharing will overthrow capitalism-- if anything, it exacerbates capitalism by making people more selfish and entitled-- "i want it all and i want it yesterday".

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I buy a book I read it, I let someone borrow it, they read it.

I buy an album of music, I listen to it. I let someone else borrow it, they listen to it.

There is no law against sharing anything for free, unless it is "digital". That is the double standard lie that Gimple is pointing at which allows ridiculous monopolies like Itunes and shit like that.

that assumes that the universe is perfectly logical and should always make sense logically from top to bottom. contradictions and paradoxes exist. limits always stretch the mind.

there's a difference between lending your friend a book-- and making infinite copies of the book at no cost to you and letting anyone have them-- or worse, charging people for you to give it to them in secret. why are we even arguing this.