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> If I took your journal entries from your room, and copied them all, and put them on the internet - that's not stealing, because I returned the journal? No, th
by Endy 9y ago
> If I took your journal entries from your room, and copied them all, and put them on the internet - that's not stealing, because I returned the journal? No, that's still theft.
No, that's merely duplication and proliferation of media and information into the public domain; information wants to be free & media calls for an audience. The sole concern at that point would be how you gained access to the media - did you cause any provable harm? In other words, let's say you're my friend. You come in to my room, I leave my journal entries open and you surreptitiously copy them while I'm getting coffee for us. You leave the journal undamaged and make your duplicates public. The only harm you did was cause me to not trust you personally and no longer allow you in my home. If, on the other hand, you broke into my home, causing real physical damage in some way, as well as making me fear for my own personal wellbeing, then yes, you have provably harmed me in a legally actionable way.
In either case, nothing was stolen. Emotional and in the latter case physical damages were done because you have duplicated personal information without my consent. A piece of released or published software is decidedly not personal information. In fact, the number of abstraction layers between a user and the creator(s) of a game usually mean that pirated copies cause no emotional harm whatsoever to the author(s).
> If someone stole bread, how would you feel about It? Screw that person right? What if they were stealing the bread from someone who would never notice the loss, and it was for their hungry kids? Suddenly it seems more reasonable.
If you are depriving someone of a basic foodstuff, and their only means of procurement and providence is legally labelled as theft, then you are perpetrating an unjust society. That's my opinion on that.
- Mindwipe 9y ago> In other words, let's say you're my friend. You come in to my room, I leave my journal entries open and you surreptitiously copy them while I'm getting coffee for us. You leave the journal undamaged and make your duplicates public. The only harm you did was cause me to not trust you personally and no longer allow you in my home. That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court would grant an injunction on publication under breach of confidence, precisely because it's such a shitty thing to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_English_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis...).
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago> That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court would grant an injunction on publication under breach of confidence, precisely because it's such a shitty thing to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis...). Yes but they would not charge you with theft. Which includes "the intention to permanently deprive"... Copying someone's private data is not theft. That doesn't mean that it is morally or legally OK (it's not - it's another crime). It just means that theft is a specific crime based on taking fungible chattel with the intent to not give it back.
- analognoise 9y agoSo you narrowly redefine theft to not include intellectual property or any non-physical good. IANAL - but I don't think this would fly in any jurisdiction anywhere. Is this definition specific to a country whose laws I'm not familiar with?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> So you narrowly redefine theft to not include intellectual property or any non-physical good. Theft in law generally only applies to tangible personal property, not intangible personally property and not real property. That's not a redefinition, just the long-existigng definition.
- analognoise 9y agoDid you plug "intellectual property theft" into Google before you came to this conclusion?
- prepend 9y agoTry it and look at laws vs non-laws.
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
- analognoise 9y ago>information wants to be free & media calls for an audience That's a nice bumper sticker, but also a bunch of shit. So the nudes you take with your wife, demand to be free and an audience? The photos of your children in the tub demand to be free, and an...audience? Reality doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. "If you are depriving someone of a basic foodstuff, and their only means of procurement and providence is legally labelled as theft, then you are perpetrating an unjust society." Oh right, so every society that's ever existed. Gotcha. Glad that doesn't happen on whatever planet you live on.
- Endy 9y ago> So the nudes you take with your wife, demand to be free and an audience? The photos of your children in the tub demand to be free, and an...audience? Reality doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. If I have them stored via digital media and don't provide it with significant forms of security, then yes - and it's my own shame if something "goes wrong". Besides, why would I take pictures or video of that if I wasn't going to look at them later? That's part of why I never got up in arms about the Apple photo breach; people stored images on a remote server whose security they were unable to monitor. > Oh right, so every society that's ever existed. Gotcha. Glad that doesn't happen on whatever planet you live on. Never said there's been a just society so far.