Why not look for ways to optimise it if it's not optimal?

Because there are a million other things in my life that aren't optimal, and the way I deal with books leaves me reasonably well satisfied even though it may not be optimal. (Note also that I only said I don't claim it's optimal even for me; it may in fact be optimal for me, but I don't have any sort of proof and don't wish to spend the time and energy it would take to defend the claim if I made it.)

How many of those do you think you'll ever actually read?

Approximately all of them. My book-reading rate isn't much slower than my book-buying rate.

I see that as a phenomenal waste of money.

Aside from the fact that (as already noted) I expect to read the great majority of them eventually, I refer you to Umberto Eco's essay on "How to justify a private library" (part of his collection entitled "How to travel with a salmon", which also contains useful advice on "How to recognize a porn movie" and "How to go through customs"), which I shall not quote here; you may pirate the book at your leisure and read it yourself.

In any case, having (let's say) $5000 of wealth tied up in books I haven't read yet (providing me with goods such as an ample choice of the next thing to read when I finish one, reinforcement of my notion of myself as an erudite intellectual sort of chap, helping to support the portion of the economy concerned with books, having lots of interesting things sat around for my daughter to read as she grows old enough to appreciate them, etc.) seems to me no worse than having a similar sum tied up in having a slightly nicer car or house than one needs. Especially as the books were almost all purchased at good prices (used, or while nicely reduced on Amazon, or whatever) and probably retain a substantial fraction of the value I paid for them -- unlike, e.g., the car. None of which means it's a good thing -- it might or might not be -- but it's at any rate no worse than indulgences that I bet you don't bother to criticize when you find them in others. Or, who knows?, in yourself.

that which is sub-optimal should be optimised

I think that principle is sub-optimal. Things that are probably sub-optimal include (for me as for just about everyone else alive) my diet, my job, my sex life, my political beliefs, my choice of reading matter, my choice of other leisure activities, my selection of friends, the set of skills I've taken the trouble to acquire, my financial arrangements, my dress sense, my relationships with family and friends, ... and if I attempted to optimize everything sub-optimal I'd have no time or energy left for anything else.

I find it inconceivable that you can't find any good use for the money you save by not buying books

I didn't say that. I was just deflecting one more specific objection. I'm sure I could find other good uses for the money. I see no reason to think they'd be any better than buying books.

this preference might just be status quo bias.

Yup, it might be status quo bias. I am aware that I am slower-than-optimal to make major changes in my life, and I expect the two things are related.

Ah, but does that really rank higher on your preference rankings than existential risk reduction?

It ranks higher on my preference rankings than saving the cost of the book by pirating it. So, out of {do nothing, pirate, buy} I choose buy over pirate. The remaining question is whether it's wrong for the enjoyment of reading to rank above existential risk reduction (or saving the lives of poor people in Africa, or influencing national politics, or any of the other Big Things I could do with my money instead of indulging myself), and on that I'm the same pile of contradictions and hacks as everyone else, which I justify (in so far as I do) in what I take to be the usual ways: staying sane and happy probably lets me contribute more to those things in total, my self-centred preferences are what they are and I shouldn't pretend otherwise, etc., etc., etc.

I should probably end this discussion now.

In which case, I apologize if any of the foregoing seems to require a response. Please be assured that if none is forthcoming I shall neither say nor think that it means you're conceding any point you don't concede explicitly :-).

No, but you should Taboo most of the words usually used, because they are not useful.

So it's fine to discuss the morality of infanticide and baby-eating, but IP infringement is taboo? :P

Taboo? No, there's no taboo. It's a question of honesty being (potentially) instrumentally detrimental to you!

Why specifically compare to theft? Why not trespassing or something?

Come to think of it on the pure abstract level it is more closely analogous to rape.

I compare it to theft because of the comparable aims of the thief and the filesharer: in most cases, I expect, and in the kind of cases Anubhav raised, something is copied in violation of IP law because it is convenient for the filesharer or saves him or her some money. That's similar to theft in a way that it's no to vandalism or tresspassing.

As to your clarificatory question, I'm not sure. So assume I agree; what are the consequences of understanding things this way?

And what of it? You're pointing to a general category with the implicit assumption that everything it contains is wrong. Which, as you know, isn't true. Perhaps most of the members of this set can be classified as wrong, but as long as wrongness isn't a general feature of this set, membership of this set isn't a sufficient condition to classify anything as wrong. Ergo, the members of this set that are wrong, aren't wrong because they belong to this set, but are wrong because they meet some other criteria of wrongness. You should think about what those criteria are, and then we can debate whether this particular issue meets those criteria.

This stinks of classical (non-bayesian) rationality. Membership in a set that is mostly wrong does not "prove" anything, but it sure is evidence. (more evidence is obviously required, in this case). Keep your bayes hat on.

EDIT: What happened to my edit! Your point still stands: we have reason to believe copying does not quite fit in that set, so we should be looking closer at the mechanisms of wrongness. /EDIT

As I and other people have pointed out, it's not even morally comparable to theft. You haven't addressed any of those comments as far as I can tell. I'll go with the charitable interpretation and assume what you mean by 'comparable' is what you're saying in the next sentence (the part I responded to in the first part of this comment).

Actually, ve just brought up that the intent and thought process is very similar. Seems like a good enough reason to compare them.

That said, I think the comparison is way overused, and even if it contains a grain of truth, it's a good idea to avoid it because it is such a politicized comparison.

And what of it? You're pointing to a general category with the implicit assumption that everything it contains is wrong. Which, as you know, isn't true.

Well, I agree that not every case of breaking the law is immoral, but I think I'd be happy to defend the claim that moral wrongness is a characteristic of the subset of legal violations undertaken for the sake of one's personal convenience. And your point about set membership doesn't seem right: it is in virtue of membership in 'elephants' that an animal has a trunk, even if its true of some elephants that they do not have trunks (wounded elephants say).

If I've failed to respond to any questions regarding my comparison of filesharing to theft, then this is purely because of my lack of understanding. Could you clarify for me the challange to this comparison, if you have the time and inclination? Or would you prefer that I made my own case more pointed first?

Why do you think these are the important features of stealing? Isn't the point just that you're taking someone's legal property, and illegally helping yourself to it? The fact that you can do this with a machine that has a neat interface doesn't seem important. ETA: And I agree its not really the book you've stolen in this case, but the money you avoided paying. Thats the thing I have a legal right to, but have been illegally deprived of.

I take it, rather, that you have an argument for why this is not stealing, or why if it is, it is nevertheless justifiable.

Well, I take it that Anubhav is talking about piriteing a book as a justifiable responce to wanting it. Legally, anyway, that's intellectual property theft.

I'm no moral theorist, but a consequentalist approach seems reasonable to me. That said, a given act of filesharing in violation of IP laws will generally have no significant consequences. Though, I suppose I think habitually violating the law because it is convenient to do so will have negative consequences for one's charachter, but that's going to vary case by case even if it is a real problem.

Why does property's being made up make a difference? I mean, I think I see what you're getting at, but I think it would be be helpful to spell the reasoning out. What exactly are the premises that lead to the conclusion that stealing isn't intrinsicly wrong?

And your argument about instrumental value seems insufficient. The theft of a book vs. Its purchace has no significant impact on the economy, and I have no reason to calculate the utilities involved in this choice as if it would. And finally? Why should I care about the condition of the economy as opposed to my personal wealth? Can't I generally justify the instrumental value of actions which damage the economy so long as they enrich me personally?

The paragraph you quote from Volkman is arguing not that copyright is an obvious consequence of the right to property, but that the possibility of copyright is an obvious consequence of the right to make arbitrary contracts. I agree: it is (and so are lots and lots of other possibilities). But that's not at all the same as saying that copyright is a consequence of the right to property.

The rest of Volkman's paper does attempt to argue something nearer to what you said, but I have to say I don't find it very convincing. He begins well enough, by saying that you aren't obliged to write books or software or whatever if you don't like the ways in which they will be used. But then he abruptly changes the subject, apparently without noticing, when he says:

So, you have no claim on the product of my labor, at least where that product would not exist were it not for my actions.

which in fact doesn't at all follow from what's gone before because it's a statement about "the product of my labor" whereas all the previous argument has been concerned with the labor itself. Now, that doesn't mean that this new statement is wrong, just that it's misleading to introduce it with "so". And in Locke's view, AIUI, the product of one's labor is indeed one's own to do with as one pleases. But here we run up against a key difference between "intellectual property" and more traditional sorts of property. It's much more obvious that (A) if I go to a lot of effort to make something, then others should not take it away from me, than that (B) if I go to a lot of effort to make something, then others should not look at what I've done and then make (near-)identical things for themselves. And while I'm willing to grant Lockeans premise (A), I'm not so willing with premise (B).

After that, Volkman spends a few paragraphs on matters that aren't (I think) directly relevant here and then turns to the argument you've cited above. As I've already said, this also doesn't show that copyright (or any other sort of intellectual property right) is a necessary consequence of the right to property, or that Lockeans or libertarians ought to approve of it. The most it shows is that you and I may make a contract that says you'll write a book and show it to me provided I promise not to give copies to anyone else. But such a contract can't possibly bind anyone else; your protection against others' actions, as far as that contract goes, is limited to being able to insist that I take steps to stop anyone else getting hold of the book. Whereas the whole idea of a copyright (and also a patent or trademark) is that a creator automatically gets to restrict the actions of everyone else, including lots and lots and lots of people who never entered into any sort of contract with her.

I disagree that they [sc. copyrights, patents and trademarks] are not at all the same as one another; they are pretty much the only cases where one can own a pattern rather than a particular object.

Sure, they have something in common. (Though I suggest that your choice of the word "own" is at least partly because we happen to use the term "intellectual property" to describe these things. If it weren't for that term, I suspect it wouldn't feel at all natural to say that one owns a trademark, for instance; "controls" or "have the right to use" would be better.)

But I wasn't denying that they have something in common. Just seeking clarity as to what particular sort(s) of "intellectual property" you think follow from (ordinary) property rights. It looks to me as if both Volkman's arguments, such as they are, apply to copyrights; the first applies to patents but the second doesn't; and neither applies to trademarks. (But maybe if it's possible to adapt his right-to-contract argument to cover copying done by people who aren't party to a contract with the creator, that will enable it to apply to patents and/or trademarks too.)