This is the flaw in this part. Digital media is not simply an idea. It is the manifestation of an idea.
Digital media has no natural property of exclusive ownership because they can spread and propagate at no cost. An idea is also manifested when it is divulged, and it requires mental labor the same as digital media.
If intangible media requires labor in order to be created then the media itself is, by extension, finite because it can’t be created without the tangible labor in order to move it from being an idea into being a product or manifestation of that idea
Wrong. There is the labor, and there is the media. The one is limited and the other is not. I didn’t take you for a proponent of the labor theory of value.
The creation of new media requires labor, but the product of that labor is infinite.
The argument you’re advocating for is that people who create digital media should only allow people to pay for temporary, physical access to that media in the same way that museums limit physical access to artwork
No, i’m saying it is the nature of the work that it requires no additional labor to copy a digital work. A limited digital stream is a copy of a work. That it expires is an arbitrary limitation that is imposed by the distributor (be it a corporation or the artists themselves) to extract a price, one that does not reflect an actual limit to the supply. That there is no other way you can think of to compensate people who produce media is really a reflection of your own lack of understanding than a reflection of ‘reality’.
It would. 100%. We don’t live in that world or on that planet.
“It is the way it is”. Doesn’t make piracy theft, it just serves as further proof that our system needs changing.
Again, the flaw in your argument is here. Their labor and time are limited, in the exact same way as the other examples, in order to create the work in question. If they’re not compensated for that work, they can’t continue to create more of it.
It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature. Conversely, if we consider every new work of media as singularly owned and distributed, the value of a corpus of media will grow indefinitely (e.g. a corporation that owns an exclusive library of work can charge whatever they want for that work, then produce and buy more exclusive work, and charge more for that work, ad infinitum; see Disney). The market as it is cannot continue indefinitely and will lead to the outcome you’re whining about here (artists not being being paid enough to eat). That is why there are dwindling production houses in media because exclusive ownership begets more exclusive ownership.
The only way to ensure artists are paid is to distribute surplus universally so they are free to produce art for its own sake (and not for the sake of the market leaders’ profit).
…only if you ignore the material cost to the creator to make it in the first place.
I’m not ignoring it, i’m assigning that value to the work itself and not the product of that work. Don’t be dense.
It does not rely on that. It relies on the idea that, regardless of whether a good is tangible or intangible, the people creating it deserve to be paid for it by the people who consume it.
It most certainly does rely on ownership, if you’re advocating for artists to be paid via ownership of the rights to access the work. It may be true that the people who consume physical goods deserve to pay for those goods (because their consuming it lessens the supply for others), it does not follow that people who ‘consume’ copies of digital works ‘deserve’ to pay for that consumption. Once again, a copy of a work does not make any the less by the act of copying.
Public domain can only apply after something has already been created.
Right, so… you’re in favor of pirating then, since you can only pirate works that have already been created…?