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Neither in some sense do people who own physical media, eg. a CD.



I’m what sense is that, exactly? I can sell my discs, play them however often and in whatever device I want. I can also rip as many times as I want onto as many computers as I want.


In the sense that you own the physical CD but only have a license to use the music on it. Ripping a CD is not legal in many countries including UK and probably the US [1], so do you 'own' the music any more than someone who has pirated it? I guess, in some sense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Legality


The license is meaningless if you hold the physical bits and choose to ignore everything else


Ownership is a social construct. The leviathan can come and take away your bits at any time.


Licenses are meaningless, period.


{L,}GPLv{2,3} has corporate lawyers consistently shitting themselves. I derive meaning from this.


Then I hate to break it to you but that’s totally not true. It might have PMs or engineers shitting themselves, but the lawyers don’t really care. It’s just not a big deal.


They play that game because they have to. Your average Joe is not going to be sued for ignoring a license.

A law is only as good as its enforcement.




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