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RE: Why Ginabot rocks and catching another plagiarist

in #steemit6 years ago (edited)

Hello, Baah. You're having trouble to distinguish absolute ownership and subjective ownership.

Absolute ownership is a theoretical impossibility by which an individual can "own" something through divine rights or universal truths. It is impossible unless you believe that a god exists who gives such ownership of something to someone.

Relative ownership is the opinion of individuals of the belonging of a certain object. If I think that a certain piece of paper that fell to the floor is mine and I pick it up, but you pick it up first because you think you own it, there is no "real ownership" but the one that will result from the discussion of our opinions. I will say "Hey, I saw that falling out of my pocket, it's mine" and you'll say something similar to fight for your right to keep the piece of paper.

If I grab your comment and I say "I wrote this" and I repost it everywhere and everyone credits me, @cryptosharon, for your comment and I get a lot of money for it, you'd feel bad because it was actually you who wrote it but I'm getting the credit. It is not because you hold absolute rights for it, but relative rights for it (coming from your opinion and the opinion held by the members of the surrounding social context).

There is a lot to debate about copyright, ownership, licenses, terms of usage, et. al., but saying "ownership doesn't exist" is just not the way to do it. Claiming and enforcing ownership of certain things might be bad for productivity, technololgical advancement or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that ownership is subjective and exists as long as someone thinks it exists.


Ownership is an opinion, but it has real consequences depending on the regulations that are present in each context. In the Steem blockchain, there is an absolute freedom. This means that anyone can say anything they want. But there are subjective regulations (as regulations are always subjective). These regulations are not called laws by any means, but they are imposed by users.

@grumpycat sets his own rules, for example, and enforces them. There is no absolute rule that says that having a bid bot that accepts more than 3.5 days is bad, but Grumpy Cat thinks that it is so and, JUST BY THE FACT that he THINKS that this should be so and acts upon it, we can say that there is a regulation.

Ownership is the same. I own my writings because I think I own them and the society that surrounds me thinks that I own them. But if nobody thought that, I would not own it.

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Ownership is not an Opinion. Ownership is a Right

With all due respect, you're still misunderstanding the different kinds of ownership.

There is an "ownership as an opinion" and an "ownership as a right". One is a thought, the other is a social convention.

Did I say that Ownership doesn't exist or does exist?

It doesn't make sense that Ideas or Content can be Owned.

You did say that. Ideas are the abstract, content is the concrete. So basically you said that nothing can be owned. I can own anything I want. I can own your head if my distorted mind thinks I somehow own it. That will be my opinion. You will disagree, of course, and society will disagree, and, legally, I will not own it, but I will in my mind.

Someone makes a sculpture. Someone steals that sculpture.

Someone makes a sculpture, someone steals the IDEA of the sculpture. The sculpture is concrete, yet it has abstract values such as its shape and what it represents. Someone makes another sculpture with the same shape and, by extension, same representation.

The first sculptor owns his sculpture because he thinks he does and society around him accepts the fact as such. The second sculptor owns his sculpture because it is his opinion, and society agrees that he owns his sculpture but society disagrees that he owns AUTHORSHIP of the sculpture.

There is no "actual ownership". There is absolute and relative ownership, and under relative ownership there is ownership as an opinion (effective only in the thinker's mind) and ownership as a right (effective in a community such as human society).

that's why you're on an OPEN SOURCE, completely transparent platform, because if you COPY the work AND claim it as your own, ain't nobody going to get "hurt" feelings or feel bad

  1. Open Source means that you can see it, not that you can copy it or alter it. You have no legal right to attribute to yourself a copy of a piece of open source
  2. Regardless of rights, can still feel bad when things happen (police can legally send someone to jail, but the person being sent to jail will feel bad about it)
  3. But you still have no legal right, regardless of open source status, to copy any work and claim it as your own. You can still be brought down by all legal means for plagiarism insofar as there are laws that regulate such actions around you.
 6 years ago  Reveal Comment