If you're interested in getting the arguments featured in this video straight from the source, check out the following books and articles:

For more on John Locke's ideas on property, read on here. For Hege's argument, check out his Elements of the Philosophy of the Right. Michael Sandel's What Money Can't Buy:The Moral Limits of Markets, Elizabeth Anderson's article "Is Women's Labor a Commodity?", and Brennan and Jaworksi's Markets Without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Markets, as well as David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals may be of interest as well.

If you want to become more familiar with philosophical defenses and criticisms of intellectual property, try reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on intellectual property.

Publishing conventions in the world of Ockham are much simpler than our own, but the choice faced by our fictional magic researcher mirrors the choice faced by many actual students and academics considering whether to use illegal online websites like Sci-Hub and LibGen (Library Genesis) to download pirated journal articles and e-books. These sites allow users to upload copies of paywalled research materials that can be downloaded by anyone, anywhere in the world.

However, there are a few major differences between using a site like Sci-Hub and using a duplication scroll in Ockham. In the real world, researchers at universities are not paid directly for the publishing rights to their work. Instead, authors are paid by universities, and they transfer the rights over their published research to for-profit companies like Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell, who run academic journals and presses. Because publishers, not researchers, profit from the sale of journal access, piracy does not deprive researchers of any money that they would otherwise make. In Ockham, on the other hand, every duplicated scroll represents a sum of money that would have been paid to the wizard who discovered the spell contained within.

Despite these differences, using "shadow library" websites like LibGen and Sci-Hub is still controversial. Proponents argue that these sites allow more equal access to knowledge, especially for students at under-resourced universities and research institutions. Many think that current publishing conventions are unjust and inefficient, creating huge profits for large companies while slowing the development and spread of information. Critics of these pirate sites argue that use of the sites is still stealing, and some have raised concerns that sites like Sci-Hub use phishing attacks and stolen credentials to stock their databases. If critics of our publishing norms are right that they are unjust, do you think it is wrong to pirate academic research? Is piracy for academic reasons any different than pirating a movie or an album?

Other aspects of for-profit academic publishing have drawn criticism, too. A recent controversy has erupted over publishing companies selling access to research papers to AI firms for training large language models like ChatGPT. This practice has sparked critical questions about ownership, consent, and copyright. Large language models rely on vast datasets- sometimes sourced freely from the internet and other times from proprietary collections. But if these models don't "copy" the material outright, instead using it to generate entirely new content, is it sill a case of copyright infringement? Should the countless authors who contributed to these datasets be credited or compensated? And, crucially, do publishers have the right to make these decisions on behalf of the creators without their input?

This video was based on a case from the National High School Ethics Bowl program, produced by the Parr Center for Ethics at UNC-Chapel Hill. Ethics Bowl cases explore various real-world scenarios and their moral and ethical implications, offering additional questions for reflection and discussion. You might be interested in other Ethics Bowl cases that deal with related issues, including intellectual property and generative AI, Fortnite emotes, eminent domain, and stolen bikes.