His position
1. One must pay for an object once, whether it is immaterial or material. This means that contained within the purchase price of a book is the price of the physical book and the price of the book's content.
2. The pdf is purely intellectual property and costs nothing to reproduce.
3. Therefore, it should be legal to download a pdf freely if you already own the hardback, and
4. If you have lost the hardback, it should be legal to download the pdf for free, but you should have to pay for a new hardback, however,
5. You should only have to pay the exact price it costs to produce the physical materials contained in the hardback, as you have already paid for the content.
My position
1. When you pay for intellectual property, you are paying to pass from one state, i.e. the state of "no access" to that property, to a state of "access" to that property.
2. Therefore, if you already own a copy of the book, you should be legally allowed to download the pdf for free, because it costs nothing to produce and you retain your right to access the intellectual property contained therein.
3. But if you have lost your copy, then you should pay to acquire another, because in losing your copy, you return from a state of "access" to a state of "no access".
4. Specifically, then, as the ontological object of "the book" and the physical medium in which that object is expressed, the hardback copy, are entwined, if you lose your physical copy of the book, you have no right to download the pdf for free.
Undesirable Consequences of His Position
If I find a book on the subway that someone has lost, it is immoral for me to read it, because I haven't purchased the intellectual property rights for that book, which are retained by the original owner.
Undesirable Consequences of My Position
The penalization of people too stupid or lazy to back up their pdfs, who then subsequently lose all of their copies. My position requires they buy their next copy.
DUDE WHAT THE FUCK I TOTES WON THAT ARGUMENT
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