>there's no marginal cost to the producer of a digital good when somebody pirates.
The factory loses nothing either if I'm giving them money for some parts that they happened to buy. I don't feel the time they spent manufacturing these materials is worth anything, just like how this guy thinks the time a movie studio spent editing their films or audio isn't worth anything.
When the movie studio filmed a bunch of scenes, the raw film is useless alone until it was edited. Likewise, the parts are useless until they were machined and assembled together.
Both have overhead in the processes. One may be more than the other, but the underlying principle is the same.
The difference with a factory is that they would have invested labor building the physical car you took.
If you're looking for an analogy to cars, it's that your friend bought a Porsche you liked, so built a copy of it.
Also, your assumption that the guy thinks movie editor time isn't worth something is false. Despite my lack of monetary compensation, I appreciate the time you took to write your post, and the much larger amount of time YCombinator took to build this site.
Right, but in both your examples there is still a physical good.
As your parent noted, digital goods are free to duplicate. If you want your argument to hold, you need to require that the film studios never allow their IP to end up digital.
Ok, then what about a DVD? You could say the same thing of a car vs movie by giving them the $.1 for the DVD itself, not the content on it.
Regardless, it doesn't matter whether it's a physical good or digital. Both physical goods and digital goods require time and money to make. When you buy a Porsche, you're not just buying the materials. You're paying for the engineering of those materials. Just because the format of the final product isn't a physical good in terms of online piracy doesn't mean there was no effort put into it.
A DVD would still be (inefficient) digital distribution. Why would I pay for that either (in the, "Why would I buy that?" sense, not the "Why wouldn't I steal that?" sense)?
The factory loses nothing either if I'm giving them money for some parts that they happened to buy. I don't feel the time they spent manufacturing these materials is worth anything, just like how this guy thinks the time a movie studio spent editing their films or audio isn't worth anything.
When the movie studio filmed a bunch of scenes, the raw film is useless alone until it was edited. Likewise, the parts are useless until they were machined and assembled together.
Both have overhead in the processes. One may be more than the other, but the underlying principle is the same.