Thank you, Jal Park, for giving me a much simpler way of arguing it for those who don’t have time to get into details right away.

Even if every song cost only $0.10 to “own” through the travesty of IP law, it would cost ~$2,000 to fill an 80GB iPod, to say nothing of one’s own hard drive.

Anyone who is familiar with IP is invited to read a critique of it by one much more familiar with it than I:
http://c4ss.org/content/521

(The person who made the absurd comparison to rape ignores the fact that what makes something a violation is physical invasion.)

Owning intellectual property amounts to owning one or more possible uses for physical property.
For any given piece of physical property, the more of it’s possible uses are owned by others, the less it’s owner is free to use it. He may only use his physical property in ways that remain unclaimed or in ways that he himself owns (which others who own similar property may not use without his permission). If we followed IP to it’s extreme conclusion where all possible uses are owned, we would reach the state where no two people could make the same type of use of similar physical property without one getting the permission of the other. If someone owned a piece of physical property, but none of it’s possible uses, he could not be said to own it in any meaningful way.

In principle, to own a method or pattern is to have a degree of control over all the physical property that exists. To the degree that the various possible uses of others’ property can be owned, those others are not it’s owners.

Let’s imagine I use my own materials to build a house of my own design. You, my neighbor, own similar materials, and seeing my method of building, you imitate my design for your own house. Now either I am justified in knocking your house apart to take back my intellectual property or I’m not. If IP is valid you have stolen my pattern and I should take steps to get it back. If IP is not valid than I’m a vandal violating your property rights. But we can’t both be right. Either I control the pattern you arrange your property in, or you do. If it’s the former, than you cannot really be said to be “owning” your physical property. This would amount to the fascist model where there is nominal private property but the state controls what can be done with it, rendering the “ownership” meaningless.

Also, there’s no reason in principle that IP couldn’t be applied to broader, more general or more obvious ideas. What if I owned not just the design of a specific car, but the very idea of a car? …or the very idea of mechanical transportation? …or the wheel? The difference is only in degree.

Removing the right of a copyright owner to profit from their property.

You use a narrow-minded, narrow description of words and twist it to try to find some intelligent insight, completely ignoring the fact that the law doesn’t say anything about taking a program.

Fail.

Your argument is not valid because atleast 75% of the time it is easier to acquire software illegaly than it is to just pay for it.

Also some arguments against piracy says it’s bad because the authors never see a cent from the copy that you now have. Then those same people should be against used cd/game/movie/book stores, not to mention libraries.

When you steal software, you are losing site over the most important thing. Only the author OWNS the software. When you buy a CD, you are buying the right to PLAY IT. Not to own it outright.

You will never get the right to own software outright. You are buying the right to USE it. Not own it.