• Nothing about the preceding statements is true.

Consequently, he was not even acting altruistic in an economic sense, he was simply sacrificing short-term revenue in hope of generating more revenue at some point in the future—a similar choice to that which is made by law students.

Indeed, while I will concede that there may be not a measurable and statistical way to prove this assertion, from my life experience, I believe that humans, like other animals, are generally incapable of acting in a truly altruistic manner.

• But there are measurable and statistical ways to prove that your view is wrong.

I suppose that I could make “Assumptions,” randomly assign them “Values” and present “Model Results” supporting my conclusion, as Terrence A. Maxwell apparently did in “Is Copyright Necessary?” but for now I will rely on my own observations and life experience for support of this conclusion. While humans act in a way that they subjectively perceive benefits them, some may value certain things more than others, and thus make different choices under the same circumstances. I believe, however, that even when a person does a purportedly altruistic act—he is driven by self interested considerations. Of course charities utilize this by acknowledging and publicly recognizing donors—creating an incentive to give money away—a purported altruistic act. If the person giving the money, however, is driven by the recognition that she will receive as a result of the economic donation—that is not an altruistic act—it is a rational act based on that person’s subjective belief at that time that the money that she gives is less valuable to her than the recognition that she will receive from the act. Even if a person chose to donate to a charity in an anonymous manner, I would still argue that is not an altruistic act. I believe that person is making that decision because he gets to experience a good feeling of being a noble person and that feeling is worth more to him than the money that he donates to the charity (which balancing of course varies depending upon, among other things the economic needs of the person at that time). Sometimes people are motivated to act in a seemingly altruistic way by a belief that they will be rewarded for that behavior by some higher power—in another life—in heaven, or however one wants to articulate it. There are many examples, but the foregoing examples illustrate my point.

The fact that human beings act rationally—

• A fact? We are now more than a century past Freud, and you are offering this obviously false statement as a FACT?

or in other words in their subjectively determined best interest—not in an altruistic way—in any given situation does not mean that they are inherently immoral, unethical, or evil. Humans are animals and as with other animals evolution will quickly eliminate any truly altruistic propensities because a truly altruistic act by definition does not benefit and may harm the actor—causing that actor to survive less frequently and to pass on less of the altruistic genes (the one exception—which does not seem relevant to our discussion—being the sacrifice of one’s own well being for the benefit of her offspring—which behavior ultimately passes on more of those protective genes). Until very recent history, an altruistic act by a human—say giving away food without receiving a benefit of equal or greater value in exchange would seriously reduce the chances of survival and the chances of dissemination of that individual’s genes with that propensity into the gene pool.

• Actually, your view above is completely wrong. The whole of modern statistical ecology, beginning with H.A.L. Fisher, is about the mathematical demonstration of the opposite. This statement isn't insightful, it's just ignorant.

I believe that this understanding and acceptance of human behavior—the inability to act against one’s self interest—is critical to understanding incentives for creation of artistic works and inventions.

• Your belief is so far not grounded in any reference to the actual content of our knowledge of intrapsychic or social psychology, is not accurate biology, and is not sociologically informed. In short, nothing you have said is based in anyone's systematic investigation of anything, and so far as you have offered no evidence, it is indistinguishable from unexamined prejudice.

Even in a zero marginal cost world, there must be incentives for the initial creation of the first product.

• This statement is not self-evident. You don't support it, and as I will show, it is true if and only if it is based on tautological definition. If offered as a serious analytical proposition, not depending on the circular definition of an "incentive" as anything that causes someone to do something, it is utterly false.

Traditionally, that incentive comes in the form of monetary compensation and inventors/creators rely on being compensated from multiple copies being distributed. Thus, the initial costs are recouped from sales of copies—even at zero or near zero margin costs—rather than from the sale of the first product—the monetary value of multiple copies being created by copyright and patent protection. Generally, the sale of the first product provides far less monetary compensation than the fixed initial cost of inventing/creating the product—resulting in a net monetary loss for the invention/creation should zero marginal cost copies be given away.

I am not yet going to take a position about whether incentives other than economic incentives could be sufficient for continued creation/invention. I understood that Professor Moglen took the position in class that he will show that monetary incentive is not necessary—that sufficient incentives could come from other sources.

• You did not understand me. Possibly you weren't trying. I did not undertake to show anything of the kind. I undertook to show that the whole idea of incentives, under the relevant social and technological conditions, is unscientific nonsense.

I am open to listening to the arguments on that issue.

• Very gracious of you. But since your text demonstrates that this supposed openness has not caused you to absorb much of the history of the West, from Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori through the early history of Christianity, to the thinkers (Darwin, Marx, and Freud) who made our contemporary world, I cannot help but wonder how your openness to argument (not, as it happens, the argument I am asking you to be open to, but only a strawman of your own construction) is functionally different from blind prejudice.

The important part I believe is understanding and accepting that whether the incentives come from monetary reward or other sources, human beings are rational, i.e., incapable of being altruistic,

• Another strawman. No one proposes forcing you to share anything you have created, whether valuable or mere rubbish. I have said, and will show the basis for concluding, two other things: (1) Under twenty-first century conditions, sharing cannot be prohibited with any degree of effectiveness; and (2) for digital goods with zero marginal cost, sharing either makes inherently superior goods, or results in inherently superior distribution, depending on the nature of the goods themselves, and thus over time shared goods produced or distributed anarchistically, without ownership, tend to outcompete and replace proprietary goods produced by capitalism. So the argument you are proposing to refute here on grounds of your superior prudence is irrelevant, and the congratulations you are awarding yourself for being smarter than I am are slightly premature.

• Would you take the same position if you were, like some children I know and admire, a slum-dweller in Bangalore living in a tightly-interwoven intact community of 2,200 extremely mutually-altruistic people who are lucky enough to share among themselves one toilet but not lucky enough to be allowed to learn? Or is it just that your personal ruminations on the experience of your own isolated life—at least equally uninformed by either much experience of the variety of human experience or much reading in the sciences of human culture—is of substantially greater importance than whatever they might have to say on the subject?