All the stuff you've said praising the greatness of FB is stuff I hate. On top of which, I don't like being required to log into an unrelated account, regardless of how many accounts I'm allowed to choose from.
Exactly, and thus we reach the end of the metaphor's usefulness . There is no limit to how much we can distribute "The Great Gatsby". Everyone can have it.
"A house benefits only its owner and occupants; a work of art benefits any who behold it."
Want to go that path? Okay. A house benefits society. Disease limitations, sanitary and noise limits, visual things others REALLY don't want to see, civility of interaction... The benefits to society are many beyond those examples.
These are all oblique benefits that could come just as well from an apartment building or dormitory as a house. I would agree that adequate housing for everyone is in everyone's interest, but this is by no means the same as saying that everyone should own a house, much less that they should have the right to inherit one down through centuries. In any case, the point is that there really is no way in which a house is like a painting, making the metaphor extremely problematic.
"and whatever benefit is conferred upon the creator is wholly incidental to its value".
I care to highly disagree with this claim. Incidental to its value? How about the cost of creation? You seriously consider fair and just compensation for creation effort to be an incidental? It's a critical aspect of at least some significant portion of creative works.
Fair and just compensation is entirely irrelevant to art. I would much prefer a world where everyone is treated fairly and justly, but the one we live in is decidedly not that world. Do you seriously expect me to care one iota what it cost an artist to create his work, or whether he was paid anything for it? I don't, and it has absolutely no bearing on my experience of the art.
You seem to be arguing that the works of Vincent Van Gogh have no artistic value because the artist received negligible compensation for his effort.
Moreover, I get the distinct impression that what matters to you is the dollar value of the house, and not its utility as a shelter and a place of comfort at all. You say that your parents "paid for it in full". And this money changing hands, in your view, gives you the right to decide what happens to the house for all eternity.
It's a very flawed metaphor, but: Suppose it were a house that had been designed by a great architect like Frank Lloyd Wright? What if the land the house sits on had the only clean water springs in the county? What if the party that sold the house to your parents had stolen it from someone else? What if your parents had promised everyone in town the free use of the house after their death? Do you still insist in each case that the fact that your parents "paid for it in full" gives you exclusive right to the house for all eternity? Merely because they happened to be your parents?
I don't really see that "diatribe" is a fair description of what I wrote, but I am interested in continuing the conversation.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that we are pursuing a metaphor. A house is not really like a work of art. I prefer an attractive house to an ugly one, but the salient property is that it provides shelter from the elements and affords a degree of comfort and privacy. Art does none of these things. It engages the mind and emotions, temporarily, creating impressions that feel something like experience.
A house benefits only its owner and occupants; a work of art benefits any who behold it. Thus we can say of a work of art that its value is in direct proportion to the number of minds it engages. We can go further: quite unlike a house, a work of art has value ONLY insofar as it is shared with others, and whatever benefit is conferred upon the creator is wholly incidental to its value. So it is an extremely irrational creator who locks his work away where none can see or hear or engage it.
But your metaphor is concerned primarily with the right of inheritance. And you are confusing the issue because on the one hand you want to inherit a house which already you occupy (so that in consenting to this society isn't really deprived of anything), and on the other hand to inherit an exclusive control over art which was already released into the world and has already engaged countless minds (so that consenting to this deprives society of a great deal that it had).
Do we take the silver jewelry away from the heirs because "our city could use the money to help balance the budget"?
We might; it might depend on whether the silver was a grant from the city in the first place. Let me turn the question back to you: which do the heirs value more? The silver, or that the city should thrive and be a pleasant place in which to live?
The house. My parents paid for it in full. It was theirs. We inherited it. Why should we not have the right to then pass that down endlessly through the generations?
Because in the far distant past, the land on which that house sits was the common property of everyone on the planet. No one could claim an exclusive right to that land. It was held in common by everyone and individual use of it required consent of everyone. The same is true of the trees, stones, water, and fuels that were the raw materials used to construct the house. Then at some point, most likely (but not necessarily) also in the far distant past, the land, trees, stones, water and fuels were stolen from everyone (most likely in a terribly violent fashion) and arbitrarily designated the property of some individual. People like to imagine that we have some kind of "natural" right of ownership, but that's an infantile fantasy propped up by laws that, after all, were themselves designed to favor robber-barons who amassed wealth through the agency of violence.
Holding property is not a natural right; it can come about either by the consent of the everyone -- or by a theft from the everyone.
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On the post: 'Quantum Copyright:' At What Point Does A Legal Copy Become Infringement?
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Fair and just compensation is entirely irrelevant to art. I would much prefer a world where everyone is treated fairly and justly, but the one we live in is decidedly not that world. Do you seriously expect me to care one iota what it cost an artist to create his work, or whether he was paid anything for it? I don't, and it has absolutely no bearing on my experience of the art.
You seem to be arguing that the works of Vincent Van Gogh have no artistic value because the artist received negligible compensation for his effort.
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On the post: 'Quantum Copyright:' At What Point Does A Legal Copy Become Infringement?
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It's a very flawed metaphor, but: Suppose it were a house that had been designed by a great architect like Frank Lloyd Wright? What if the land the house sits on had the only clean water springs in the county? What if the party that sold the house to your parents had stolen it from someone else? What if your parents had promised everyone in town the free use of the house after their death? Do you still insist in each case that the fact that your parents "paid for it in full" gives you exclusive right to the house for all eternity? Merely because they happened to be your parents?
On the post: 'Quantum Copyright:' At What Point Does A Legal Copy Become Infringement?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Let us not lose sight of the fact that we are pursuing a metaphor. A house is not really like a work of art. I prefer an attractive house to an ugly one, but the salient property is that it provides shelter from the elements and affords a degree of comfort and privacy. Art does none of these things. It engages the mind and emotions, temporarily, creating impressions that feel something like experience.
A house benefits only its owner and occupants; a work of art benefits any who behold it. Thus we can say of a work of art that its value is in direct proportion to the number of minds it engages. We can go further: quite unlike a house, a work of art has value ONLY insofar as it is shared with others, and whatever benefit is conferred upon the creator is wholly incidental to its value. So it is an extremely irrational creator who locks his work away where none can see or hear or engage it.
But your metaphor is concerned primarily with the right of inheritance. And you are confusing the issue because on the one hand you want to inherit a house which already you occupy (so that in consenting to this society isn't really deprived of anything), and on the other hand to inherit an exclusive control over art which was already released into the world and has already engaged countless minds (so that consenting to this deprives society of a great deal that it had).
On the post: 'Quantum Copyright:' At What Point Does A Legal Copy Become Infringement?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: 'Quantum Copyright:' At What Point Does A Legal Copy Become Infringement?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Holding property is not a natural right; it can come about either by the consent of the everyone -- or by a theft from the everyone.
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