The purpose of property rights is to efficiently utilize scarce resources.
Scarce resources include: air on the moon, land, time, physical goods. For example if there is only one potato chip left in the bag me eating it prevents you from eating it.
Data and information are not scarce resources. A copy of software on my computer in no way diminishes the usefulness of the very same software on your computer. In fact both of us having the software may increase the efficiency of scarce resources like our computers or our time!
That's why property rights for data/information/movies/music/software do not improve economic efficiency and make us all worse off.
Scarce resources include: air on the moon, land, time, physical goods. For example if there is only one potato chip left in the bag me eating it prevents you from eating it.
Data and information are not scarce resources. A copy of software on my computer in no way diminishes the usefulness of the very same software on your computer. In fact both of us having the software may increase the efficiency of scarce resources like our computers or our time!
That's why property rights for data/information/movies/music/software do not improve economic efficiency and make us all worse off.