5 ms·
Theft != copyright infringement.
by monochromatic 10y ago
Theft != copyright infringement.
- stop_thief 10y agoAh, that tired old linguistic argument that completely misses the point.
- contras1970 10y agoif copyright infringement is theft, then theft is surely murder?
- stop_thief 10y agoIllogical. Please show your working.
- kuschku 10y agoAh, that tired old PIRATE-COPIER-MURDERER-TERRORIST argument. You do realize that copyright protection is an invention to prevent artists from being fucked over by commercial publishers, and was originally not intended to limit people from copying content noncommercially?
- stop_thief 10y agoAn interesting history lesson, but irrelevant to the current discussion.
- monochromatic 10y agoIf I steal your car, I've deprived you of the use of your car. If I copy your program, have I deprived you of the use of your program? How is that a linguistic argument?
- stop_thief 10y agoBecause you're using an unreasonably narrow definition of theft that doesn't include intangibles.
- icebraining 10y agoTell that to the SCOTUS: interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud. By the way, the infringer was acquitted, since the court agreed he hadn't "stolen, converted or taken by fraud", despite even making money from his infringing activities.
- stop_thief 10y agoA counterpoint to this interpretation of the Dowling verdict - http://lawtheories.com/?p=1881 http://lawtheories.com/?p=1881: > This lack of “physical removal,” as required by the statute, meant that Dowling’s infringing copies were not “the sorts of goods whose interstate shipment § 2314 makes criminal.” But this doesn’t mean that Dowling’s acts of infringement in creating the physical records were not themselves acts of theft or conversion.
- icebraining 10y agoUnconvincing argument. The court's statement, as I reproduced above, is not about the specifics of the statute, otherwise it would have said "it's theft, just not physical removal". The wording is very clear. The example of the other case (which, by the way, was only a District Court decision) also seems weak. AFAIK (IANAL), the fact that copyright law preempted state law doesn't mean the two are equal, it just means that both theft and copyright infringement occurred - which is easily seen to be the case, since physical plans were actually removed from a place.
- monochromatic 10y agoLet me know when your definition makes it into a legal dictionary.
- sah2ed 10y agoYou are correct. In fact the distinction between your two examples i.e the car (a tangible good) and the program (an intangible good) is what economists refer to as rivalry [0]. A car is a rivalrous good. A program is a non-rivalrous good. The main distinction is that the marginal cost of producing a non-rivalrous good is zero. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)