I think we’ve drifted away from your original argument.
Your original comment was making a philosophical case. It appealed to history, Locke’s labor theory, and the moral authority of creators. My response addressed those claims directly.
Your latest reply, however, isn’t really defending that philosophical position. It’s explaining how software licensing currently works under copyright law and why software is treated differently from books or paintings.
I don’t disagree with most of that. Software has long occupied a unique legal category, and EULAs have existed for decades.
But that’s a different argument from the one you originally made. We’ve shifted from “this is the morally correct understanding of ownership” to “this is the current legal framework for software.”
If your point is simply that software has historically been licensed rather than sold outright, then I don’t think we’re actually in much disagreement anymore.
TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
You make a fair observation, and I appreciate the level-headed read of the thread. However, I would argue that the argument hasn’t drifted; it has just moved from the philosophical foundation to its practical application. The legal framework of software licensing does not exist in a vacuum. EULAs, copyright law, and the strict legal distinction between software and physical media are the mechanisms society built to enforce the exact moral philosophy I outlined at the start.
When John Locke argued that a creator owns the fruits of their intellectual labor, he established the moral baseline. When a modern developer writes a EULA stating you are only buying a temporary license to execute their code, they are simply legally codifying that Lockean principle. The law treats software differently than a physical painting or a book precisely because the law recognizes the philosophical difference between a static object and a living digital ecosystem that requires ongoing human labor.
So, we haven’t abandoned the moral argument for a legal one. The current legal framework is just the practical enforcement of the creator’s moral authority. If we agree on the legal reality of how software is licensed, then we fundamentally agree on the ultimate conclusion: the consumer does not possess the moral right to demand permanent ownership of another person’s ongoing intellectual labor.