Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
Duplicate the car with your magic machine, and see how fast VW slaps you with a gajillion dollar lawsuit.
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That is not the point. The point is, what is the thing that is lost? What is the damages and how can you quantify them? If someone steals your pink VW, your loss is calculated by the value of the pink VW. If it were conceptually possible for someone to steal your pink VW while not depriving you of said pink VW, your loss would be nil, from a "theft" standpoint. You still have your pink VW, how can you claim it was stolen?
As Yen points out, what is actually lost is the potential for you to sell your pink VW to the person who duplicated it with their magical machine. If we, for the sake of the example, assume that there WAS no opportunity to sell the pink VW to that person, the value of THAT loss is also quantifiable at nil.
However, this is a tougher argument to make - obviously the person who copied the VW placed some value on it, or why would they have copied and driven it away in the first place? They clearly feel they're better off with it than without it. However, a purchasing decision is a binary equation - either you would've bought it at the going rate, or you wouldn't have. In this case, it's not that hard to show you wouldn't have paid $20,000 or so for a car you don't like. In the case of a movie, would you have rented it? Maybe. It's all speculative.