Hey James!
This is a more elaborate reply to your arguments.
1. "I simply object to Kinsella's denial that creative labor is worth anything."
He does not say that it is not worth anything. He simply takes a property approach to IP. It is not about value.
Intellectual property is a claim that there should be property rules in the sphere of ideas. Thus, to analyze this
claim, we must analyze property theory.
2. "If I want to increase the value of the blank DVDs by printing onto them
content created by someone else, that's *just fine* because I own the
material goods. If I then sell these newly-valuable DVDs for higher than
the cost of the blank ones, I am earning a profit. The work that I did
to earn that profit is a tiny iota of the work that went into the
content that I used, but I am making money off of it and I am not paying
the people who did the hard work."
Right. Thing is - value has nothing to do with property rights. Property rights appear as soon as there is rivalrousness.
To supply an example. Let's say you took someone's piece of marble and created a statue out of it. Is it now your statue,
because you've added "value" to it?
Creation in itself does not give you any property rights. In fact, there is no creation, there is always only changing matter
according to laws of physics.
3. Did you read the whole thing?
I am asking, because Stephan goes through all that in great detail.
L.V.