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What you are saying is inherently contradictory. The "physical disc" is comprised of tiny peaks and valleys. If I "own the disc" why can I not do whatever I want with those peaks and valleys?


No, what I'm saying is not at all contradictory. The separation between the physical medium and artistic work it carries is not a complicated concept to understand.

It is for the same reason you do not own the story in a book you buy. You have a physical stack of paper that's yours to do whatever you want with: read it for your pleasure, prop open the door with it, burn it if you like. However the concept of the story that the book conveys – the particular ordering of the words – is not yours, it (by default) belongs to the person who created it, as they put effort into the creation of that art.

Imagine the world you are fantasizing. You spend a year writing a book, you go to a publisher to have it published. You give them a copy for consideration. You don't hear anything back and then, later, find they have taken your story and published it themselves. It becomes a top selling book. Intellectual property rights are originally envisaged to protect artistic creators from this exploitation, otherwise why would they bother to create in the first place?

(Unfortunately, there is still a lot of large organisations exploiting artists, as they largely control the media that exposes people to art in the first place. This means artists have to sign away their rights in order to get an advance and the promise of exposure.)


Ownership is classically a combination of a bundle of rights. You have most of those rights, but you do not have all of them.




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