Stealing
Dan Bricklin on shoplifting vs. illicit copying.
Bricklin makes a memorable comparison:
Pirating works online is really more like kids watching a baseball game through a hole in the outfield wall, or listening to a concert just outside the gate.
In fact the desire to capture all positive externalities resulting from one's labor or property is so pervasive that the Chicago Cubs sued owners of buildings surrounding Wrigley Field because the building owners made money operating rooftop bars with views into the baseball stadium. (Do a Google search for "Wrigley Field rooftop lawsuit" or similar.) Bricklin assumes that people will feel that it is legitimate to derive enjoyment from being nearby a concert or game without paying -- but not all stadium owners agree!
It seems to be an awfully appealing strategy to make money by taxing other people for the use of positive externalities resulting from your activity, while trying to avoid incurring costs for the negative externalities. (Some people, like entertainers' managers and publishers, may focus on capturing more positive externalities, while others, like polluters, may focus on avoiding paying for the negative externalities.)
If we can find examples of traditional activities which produce benefits for others (sic vos non vobis!) and where there has not yet been a successful lobbying effort to create property rights in those benefits, these might turn out to be interesting sources of metaphors for the copyright debates.
The interesting fact is that there is probably no absolutely consistent single obvious moral principle about externalities -- but lots of people feel as if there is one.
