...continued from above


You have misunderstood the point about the product being worthless. It is worthless because the opportunity to sell it never existed. I clearly stated this in my previous post. It is not a matter of whether anyone wants it or not, it's a matter of whether there is any realistic way that the owner would be able to sell it to the consumer.
I have dealt with this above. The fact that there is no 'opportunity to sell' is a function of the system and not a capricious one, but quite necessary. No seller is withholding the property from the 'user' simply because he can, but because it is necessary to do so in order for the market to work. 'User' has no non-capricious claim on the property. However, giving into this weak want (by not pressing my own claims) exposes my property to potential harm in dilution of value as the free copy might be propagated around the market through 'loss' or otherwise, or the process by which the copy was made, through 'loss' or otherwise. In fact, allowing those unwilling to pay for property to simply have it free of charge could cause the market to collapse, a great moral harm to buyers and sellers everywhere. Obviously if Napster wasn't stopped, this would have eventually happened to the music industry as the 'opportunity to sell' simply disappeared from the market.

[snip] The song is worthless in this context - not to the consumer, to the copyright owner. There is no chance that the copyright owner is going to extract any money from the consumer in exchange for the right to own a copy of the song.
Again, I showed above that this 'lost opportunity' is already subsumed in the market. This is a loss to the seller and the buyer, but the seller and buyer also gain in other areas. It is a trade-off that ultimately benefits both. Sellers reach a stable median price which is expected to somewhere close to what they would get in an auction environment after costs. Buyers get to have some or many desires fulfilled at (at least to them) bargain prices.

In retrospect, in the final paragraph of my previous post, I was unclear. I should not have said it was worthless to the individual, that was not quite what I meant, I should have said something along the lines of "an individual in the context of whom it is worthless". Although that's still a bit unclear, it's closer to the intended meaning.
This is not important, but I thought this was cleared up above. Your point is that it has no potential value to the seller because this is a 'no opportunity to sell' situation. Am I wrong or is there something more to it?

I think perspective (a) is fine, which is where we obviously disagree. I suspect that the reason behind your disapproval of (a) is not because of the "what if they borrowed your car" idea, but something else, since I really don't see it as a very similar situation.
Simply put: no cognizable, let alone compelling, right to the property and potential harm to the owner. So, if you don't want to pay for the product, please let me know why I should be compelled to give it to you? What is the harm to you, the person who wants the product?

Why do you think they are fair by definition? Is there some ancient greek or latin literal translation here tha I don't know about? I still don't see why a law should be intended to be fair. The law is there to maintain social order. It is self-perpetuating, just like any other evolving entity; it must be in order to survive. The law has not evolved on the basis of fairness, but on the basis of upholding the law. Obviously what affects the survival of any part of the law is mainly the opinion of the people who have the power to decide it, which is partly those high up in the area, such as judges and those like them, and partly the people as a whole.
Laws are a functional component of justice and thus must be fair to be just. Laws by definition apply to all subjects similarly situated, ie. they are fair. Like cases are treated alike. (They may be fair in other ways, such as the process of their generation and the weighing of interests) Laws maintain social order because people abide by them and they do that because they think that, all else being equal, they are fair. Unfair laws usually cause an impetus to change them. So, social order is maintained to the extent that laws fit their function, that is they are fair. Your statement 'law has [ ] evolved [...] on the basis of upholding the law' is hopelessly circular and therefore meaningless. What is the sense of it? What would be the content of a law evolved on the basis of upholding the law? It could be only one: 'Obey the law'. This would cause an infinite loop in any lesser mind. We, on the other hand, just ignore such circular nonsense.

A prime example of the law maintaining social order in preference to being fair is in places where capital punishment is not practiced, such as the UK. A person could commit a series of heinous crimes - think of whatever crimes you hate most - and upon their apprehension they would simply be imprisoned for the rest of their life. Is this fair? Certainly not, it would be fair to be as harsh on them as they had been on the rest of society.
I see, you simply don't understand the word 'fair'. I suggest you look it up. Capital punishment is unfair when, say, disproportionally those who are black get executed for crimes that everyone else gets life imprisonment for. When like cases are treated differently. Fairness is a substantive component of justice, but it is not synonymous with it. There are other things important to justice. Fairness is only one of them.

Why, then, don't we execute such people?[snip]
I believe that the death penalty was abolished in the UK and elsewhere due to the fact that errors can and have been made. The danger of killing an innocent person is both real and should be enough on its own to abolish the penalty. I don't think many people buy the 'you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs' line of reasoning in this regard. There is a point about consistency: we kill even though we say one shouldn't kill. There is also the issue of proportionality of punishment: few killers kill their victims in the way we execute prisoners, i.e. lock them in a room and tell them exactly when and where and how they will kill them and then take their time doing it. If you increase proportionality in punishment (by reducing the time to death) then you increase the potential for error. It is a punishment we are not equipped to give and we are arguably inconsistent in giving it.

P.S. I also don't think it is fairly administered here in the U.S.

cypherx