> When you purchase a bound copy of my book, a small part of that money pays for the physical object. The publisher also takes a part, and that's what they use to keep the lights on in their office. The last bit goes to me so I can feed my cat and work on my next book. How does the medium or your ability to copy it change the fact that my cat needs to eat, and in lieu of getting paid for my writing so I can feed him, I'll need to do something other than write?
The physical book feels like it's worth something. The digital copy doesn't. People have a moral intuition that they should pay you in the first place, and that they should not in the second, and legality is largely just the formalisation of our moral intuitions.
> The physical book feels like it's worth something. The digital copy doesn't. People have a moral intuition that they should pay you in the first place, and that they should not in the second, and legality is largely just the formalisation of our moral intuitions.
If this were the whole picture, it would be legal for anyone to take the text of Harry Potter and print their own copies of it.
Or all books with the same physical "feel" would cost the same.
In the US, its constitution motivates copyright and patent law pretty clearly "[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts."
At least in that sense the laws are to ensure that people have some incentive to actually create new stuff and ideas.
Furthermore, people inherently attribute value to the information within or else you would not see price differences in content with the same physical feel.
> Furthermore, people inherently attribute value to the information within or else you would not see price differences in content with the same physical feel.
We largely don't see such differences though. We would assume Harry Potter is what, 3x as good as competing knock-offs? But it's always been priced comparably to other books in the same form factor, certainly not 3x as much.
The physical book feels like it's worth something. The digital copy doesn't. People have a moral intuition that they should pay you in the first place, and that they should not in the second, and legality is largely just the formalisation of our moral intuitions.