Because you didn’t make it. I’ll grant that western ideas about intellectual property are weird and inconsistent, but I’m taking it as a given that we hold that idea in common. If a writer writes something, that sequence of words in the order they wrote is their “property” and they get to determine who gets to see it.
I am cognizant that in this kind of space a lot of people probably won’t hold this view of intellectual property and there are good arguments as to why it shouldn’t exist at all. I suppose at this moment I’m not really in the mood to go down this rabbit hole, so forgive me if that is where you want to go.
That isn’t how we view writers at all though. Writers can refuse to sell you a physical book if they’ve made that, sure, but they can’t stop someone from selling you a used copy, or one that ended up in the hands of a library from being lent to you. They can’t stop you from sharing your copy of their book with a friend, or reading it to someone, even if they don’t want that someone to see it.
Because you didn’t make it. I’ll grant that western ideas about intellectual property are weird and inconsistent, but I’m taking it as a given that we hold that idea in common.
The right of the author is to be the one who decides who creates the copies, but it definitely isn’t to decide who gets to use the copies in whichever way. Traditional libraries existed for millennia and honestly wouldn’t be able to operate under this thinking.
Because you didn’t make it. I’ll grant that western ideas about intellectual property are weird and inconsistent, but I’m taking it as a given that we hold that idea in common. If a writer writes something, that sequence of words in the order they wrote is their “property” and they get to determine who gets to see it.
I am cognizant that in this kind of space a lot of people probably won’t hold this view of intellectual property and there are good arguments as to why it shouldn’t exist at all. I suppose at this moment I’m not really in the mood to go down this rabbit hole, so forgive me if that is where you want to go.
That isn’t how we view writers at all though. Writers can refuse to sell you a physical book if they’ve made that, sure, but they can’t stop someone from selling you a used copy, or one that ended up in the hands of a library from being lent to you. They can’t stop you from sharing your copy of their book with a friend, or reading it to someone, even if they don’t want that someone to see it.
The right of the author is to be the one who decides who creates the copies, but it definitely isn’t to decide who gets to use the copies in whichever way. Traditional libraries existed for millennia and honestly wouldn’t be able to operate under this thinking.