>No. If I do not have food I do not have the right to demand you give me your food. //
You do have that right, if I have plenty you have a right to a share of it. When the Earth was created no man had ownership of any of it. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote quite persuasively on this point. Sure if I take my food and waste it then that right is diminished accordingly.
>If I can not afford to pay a local utility company for their water access services they are not required to give it to me for free. //
So why should you give them the right to take it in the first place. They don't have the right to the water any more than you. Less probably.
How would you consider this as a question of moral obligation, would you say that if you have lots of food and someone else has none that you're morally obligated to give from your plenty?
We've been speaking of rights in the legal context. And laws != morals.
I think there are certain rights to access natural resources. For example the beaches of California are strictly public property. I think there are rights to fair access to natural resources such as water. However I do not think that if I spend considerable resources to build a distribution network for that water that other people have a right to access that network.
I do have plenty. More than I need. Food, water, and shelter. There are people who do not have enough of them. There are many people who have no shelter. We call them homeless. I have more rooms in my house than required to thrive. Does someone who is homeless have a right to enter my home and make use of the excess shelter that I have?
I think this is a very important conversation for us to be having and I don't claim to have anywhere near all of the answers.
However, I do think that your first sentence kind of dodges the question here. The rest of this comment thread was discussing what rights people should have, not what rights they do have.
If we approach this from a legal viewpoint the conversation is over before it starts: Piracy's illegal, you don't have a right to content. You don't have a right to food.
However, when we start looking at it from a moral perspective things are much more open ended: Should we have a right to content? Should we have a right to food?
I think these are more interesting questions and that falling back on the rule of law kind of kills the discussion.
I guess at the end of the day I don't know the best way to handle copyright, but I do know we should have a conversation about it, and that we should come at it from a morality perspective.
You do have that right, if I have plenty you have a right to a share of it. When the Earth was created no man had ownership of any of it. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who wrote quite persuasively on this point. Sure if I take my food and waste it then that right is diminished accordingly.
>If I can not afford to pay a local utility company for their water access services they are not required to give it to me for free. //
So why should you give them the right to take it in the first place. They don't have the right to the water any more than you. Less probably.
How would you consider this as a question of moral obligation, would you say that if you have lots of food and someone else has none that you're morally obligated to give from your plenty?
As an addendum, do you have plenty?