I already said in what respect they're analogous: they're analogous in that the argument Bronzeage made could equally well have been made about slaves; ... Until you or someone else exhibits some way in which the parallel breaks down, relying on his argument for the existence of intellectual property is a special-pleading fallacy. Can you exhibit such a breakdown? (Conversely, if you can't exhibit such a breakdown, but you regard a sequence of words as ownable for some different reason from the argument Bronzeage gave, then the legitimacy of my analogy is moot since it only existed for the purpose of rebutting Bronzeage's argument.) ...
A slave is a human being who can suffer and have his life and family destroyed by assholes more powerful than him; a book is the production of a human mind and cannot suffer, has no feelings, rights, or anything else: it's just a series of words strung together in a unique fashion. A slave trader or slave owner has no legitimate claim on a human being,
Are you trying to rescue Bronzeage's argument? The differences you're bringing up have no connection to the reasons he offered. A slave's suffering doesn't stop a slaver from holding him prisoner, doesn't stop the neighbors from siding with the slaver, and doesn't stop the slaver from considering the slave rightfully his; a book's lack of feelings doesn't make exclusivity enforceable, doesn't make the neighbors regard people who copy it as thieves, and doesn't make the author's considering that he owns it any stronger a feeling than the slaver's.
If you're offering your own argument and aren't trying to rescue Bronzeage's argument, then there's no reason for us to discuss slavery any further since I only brought it up because it demonstrates that his argument was illogical. The slavery analogy was never meant to refute all arguments for intellectual property, only Bronzeage's.
For instance, this is a completely different and considerably better argument for it:
but an author's claim to a piece of work is legitimate, by virtue of the fact that she has produced it.
Certainly; just as a caveman's claim to the hand axe he produced is legitimate. If another caveman grabbed the hand axe and walked off with it he'd be in the wrong; likewise, if a reader grabbed the author's manuscript and drove off with it he'd be in the wrong. But if another caveman sees the first one making the hand axe, thinks "What a good idea!", and starts making one just like it, do you think that the second caveman is in the wrong? Imitating one another has been such an integral part of our ancestors' survival strategy for so many millions of years that we call it "aping". At some point in our evolutionary past did it suddenly become the same thing as grabbing something and walking off with it?
If you think producing something gives you a legitimate claim that other people have no right to copy what you produced, here's another example to consider. Twenty years ago the grocery stores around here had decent kiwi fruit from New Zealand for a few months of the year; the rest of the year only California-grown crud. Some clever person in New Zealand had produced a business plan: "I'll get the farmers here to sell me their fruit that gets ripe in abundance here at this time of year, I'll put it on a boat, and I'll sell it in California; and people there will pay me a lot more than I'll be paying for it because the kiwi fruit that grows there in abundance tastes like crud." It worked; it was a good business plan. But things have changed in the last twenty years. Today I can get tasty kiwi fruit in my grocery store most of the year, imported from Chile and Italy. It appears some less clever Chileans and Italians saw what the New Zealander was doing, thought "What a good idea!", and started copying her business plan.
My question to you is, do you think that this New Zealander has a legitimate claim that she has a right to prohibit the Chileans and Italians from copying her business plan, by virtue of the fact that she has produced it?
This isn't to say that other people have a right to copy Bronzeage's book. There are all sorts of things people have no right to do even though they aren't theft. In this case, his claim that others have no right to copy his book is legitimate, by virtue of the fact that Congress passed a copyright law as authorized by the Constitution, and the term of the copyright hasn't expired yet. Congress made a deal with Bronzeage: "You write a book, and in exchange we'll take away a part of other people's right to copy it and give that right to you." That's the same deal the city council makes with fire fighters: "You put out fires, and we'll take away a part of other people's money and give that money to you." A person who won't give up his right to copy the book so Congress can keep its promise is the same kind of person as one who won't give up his money so the city council can keep its promise. Not a thief; a tax evader.
So what difference does it make? Does it matter whether the wrongdoer is a thief or a tax cheat? Does it matter whether a copyright is property or a contract? Yes, it absolutely matters. People's widespread habit of erroneously thinking of information as something that can be owned gives Disney and its clones cover to endlessly extend copyrights to longer and longer periods, thereby turning the Constitution's requirement that the government-granted monopoly be for a limited time into a de facto dead letter. A hand axe doesn't become part of the commons seventy years after the guy who made it dies. It can be passed down to his descendants forever. So if we're pretending that information is the same thing as a hand axe, then why should there be any such thing as copyright expiration, or, for that matter, fair use, parodies, derivative works, or even temporary copies in your computer's memory? That's what's at stake here, not just Bronzeage's need to call people who disagree with him thieves whether we infringe his copyright or not.
