I am strongly convinced that the possession of ideas and creations of the intellect is not possible. In my opinion, only physical things can be possessed, that is, things that are limited, that is, that can only be in one place. The power or the freedom to do with the object what one wants corresponds to the concept of possession. This does not mean, however, that one must expose everything openly. It is ultimately the difference between proprietary solutions, where the “construction manual” is kept to oneself, and the open source philosophy, where this source is accessible to everyone.
As the title says, I would oppose this thesis to your arguments and hope that together we can rethink and improve our positions. Please keep in mind that this can be an enrichment for all, so we discuss with each other and not against each other ;)
Either you own the computers of authors and instruments of composers and brushes of painters, or that’s irrelevant at best.
You’re not wrong;
Authors and composers are some of the few places where labor largely correlates with ownership in our current system, and I’d definitely argue that this is a genuinely positive thing.
However, even in these fields, this is not true most of the time.
Most writing is not done under a self-ownership model. Ignoring LLMs, most writings: news articles, critic writing, advertising, etc. is done under contract (or employment) with a larger company that owns the IP of the writing, and the actual authors are directly paid only for the labor.
Music is more complicated, but my understanding is that while composers do often hold some ownership for commercial works, the more general “Music industry” publishing doesn’t happen without giving up much of the ownership of the artist’s works.
My point, frankly, is that framing capitalism as a system where there is no “right [to] claim the fruits of somebody else’s labor” is fundamentally, objectively, incorrect.
I said nothing at all about capitalism. I merely asked OP by what right they claim the fruits of somebody else’s labor.
To that end, I’d note that the right by which those cited in your examples do so is by entering into contracts with the creators under which the creators explicitly and (more or less) voluntarily grant them that right.
And therefore, I’d say that this:
is mostly wrong.
Any right that one might invoke in order to claim the fruits of someone else’s labor is a right that has been explicitly granted by the person providing the labor, and that does not exist unless and until granted.
It sounds like I need to apologize then. I jumped to the conclusion based on the name of the community and (to some extent) the sidebar, that the assumed framing was that of a capitalist system (i.e. an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.). If that’s not a valid assumption, then I fully withdraw my complaints.
I’m with you 100% on the ideas that peoples’ labor and the fruits thereof is theirs and theirs alone to sell.
I’d still argue that coerced consent is no consent, and that under the current system, most permissions granted by people providing labor has effectively been coerced.