“You see, the kicker is that you do not take off a song from a CD, the song is still there. You make a copy. It is an extension of a right that goes back to hand-copying texts from a book, or photocopying it for personal use, and so on.”
Which is why I made the point of saying that if I threw away the CD, could I sell the file on its own.
And I couldn’t. Which tells me that I don’t own the file, in any meaningful way (this bit was important, not incidental).
If you commission me to create a PDF document for you, and I deliver it on a USB key, you can remove it from the key as you own that file. You might not be able to make copies (that’s down to our contract), but if I told you that it had to stay on that USB key forever, and removing it constituted piracy, I think you might start to question your ownership over that file.
