5 ms·

This argument is somewhat disingenuous. It completely glosses over a huge portion of the issue, that has nothing to do with legal definitions. Namely, stealing

This argument is somewhat disingenuous. It completely glosses over a huge portion of the issue, that has nothing to do with legal definitions. Namely, stealing deprives the victim of something they otherwise would have, or even more coloquially "did he take away your stuff?". Now the crux of the debate rests on this very simple concept. If I take your car, without permission, it is stealing it. Very obviously you have been deprived of your car. If I stay in your hotel, and then decide not to pay my bill, I have deprived you of the 1. the overhead associated with a person's visit and 2. revenue that room otherwise could have generated. Now here is the question: when I copy your song, am I depriving you of anything? All the electronic devices are using resources paid for by third parties. You can still sell your song just fine, my act of copying has in no way prevented you from selling the song to other people. I may or may not have bought the song, so it is questionable if I am even depriving you of money you otherwise would have made (assuming no-fee copying, e.g. torrenting). So, all that explaining to get to a "maybe" answer to "did he take away your stuff?" when applied to copyrighted data (a song). Now, there is some more nuance than even that: if I sell your song, I am obviously depriving you of money people are willing to pay for it. If I give away your song tho, there is no money I am depriving you of -- the people who gave me $0 are not guaranteed to give you the asking price without my giveaway. Further, how much of my giveaway is made up for in increased popularity? Could I charge back with a "stolen services" suit, declaring that my giveaway of your song helped push it to number 1, therefore you owe me marketing fees? Basically, yes, some people get caught up in the legal definition aspect, but that is because the legal definition argument closely mirrors my question of "did he take your stuff". I do agree though, that maybe we nerds should come up with a good way of discussing it w/out invoking lawyers anyway.

rick888 16y ago
"If I take your car, without permission, it is stealing it. Very obviously you have been deprived of your car." Should we change the term "identity theft". Technically, it's not theft at all and nothing has been taken from you. If I have a website that shares your credit card numbers online (I'm not using the cards, just giving out the numbers), would you call this theft? Nothing has been physically taken from you. "Now here is the question: when I copy your song, am I depriving you of anything? All the electronic devices are using resources paid for by third parties. You can still sell your song just fine, my act of copying has in no way prevented you from selling the song to other people. I may or may not have bought the song, so it is questionable if I am even depriving you of money you otherwise would have made (assuming no-fee copying, e.g. torrenting)." I find that most people that don't want to call copyright infringement theft do so because they don't feel what they are doing is wrong (and want to make it seem like it's fine). It's not theft, it's counterfeiting. It would actually be better for the content owner if it was theft, because digital goods rely on the perception of value. If everyone can get your software for free, it drives the perceived value (and the actual value) to $0.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Identity theft is very much theft: You take away my credibility as a person, and frequently leave me with contractual debt I am forced to pay (without some serious proof fraud, and honestly, most people never recover fully from the effects of it monetarily or emotionally). [A side note: your juxtaposition of Identity theft and Car theft is very misleading and strawmany, given that the next line was about theft of services, a situation much more akin to ID theft. Please try to make your points slightly less illogically.] My credit card number is passed around the world all the time as part of transactions. It isn't a problem until someone uses it to take money from me. I would call it privacy violation, I would call it slimy, I would even call it criminal but I wouldn't call it theft. As for the rest of your argument: you are obviously just a welfare queen. You want the government to enforce your profits via copyright handouts. At this point I bet you are having a WTF moment about my use of welfare in the above paragraph. Well, here is my reasoning: copyright is as close to theft as copyright enforcement is to welfare. Any attempt to declare that the fuzzy thinking is OK in one and the same fuzzy thinking is not OK in the other is hypocrisy.
  - rick888 16y ago
    "A side note: your juxtaposition of Identity theft and Car theft is very misleading and strawmany, given that the next line was about theft of services, a situation much more akin to ID theft. Please try to make your points slightly less illogically." You are the one making illogical points. ID theft is just like copyright infringement. Data is copied and used in ways that is not desired by the content holder. The original is still there. My point is that even though the data is still there (and can be copied freely), it still has an effect on the value (the perceived value of software goes down over time because more and more people can get it for free). "You take away my credibility as a person" Copyright infringement takes away the credibility of the content holder and reduces the value of that content. ", and frequently leave me with contractual debt I am forced to pay (without some serious proof fraud, and honestly, most people never recover fully from the effects of it monetarily or emotionally)." Still, under uour definition it can't be considered "theft". "At this point I bet you are having a WTF moment about my use of welfare in the above paragraph. Well, here is my reasoning: copyright is as close to theft as copyright enforcement is to welfare. Any attempt to declare that the fuzzy thinking is OK in one and the same fuzzy thinking is not OK in the other is hypocrisy." Now I know you don't know what you're talking about. Welfare is money or assistance that the government gives out (and is paid for by the tax payers). If copyright enforcement is welfare, so is our police force and fireman. I guess anyone that supports either of those are "welfare queens" too. I also never said it was theft. I said it's counterfeiting, which is much worse than theft. I wish there were no copyrights (I hope at that point I have lots of money saved up). I will just sit there and poach other companies for their ideas.
jcl 16y ago
Now, there is some more nuance than even that: if I sell your song, I am obviously depriving you of money people are willing to pay for it. If I give away your song tho, there is no money I am depriving you of -- the people who gave me $0 are not guaranteed to give you the asking price without my giveaway. This is a new one on me... Bootlegging is bad because it deprives the creator of measurable money. But giving copies away is fine because the recipients might or might not have bought it anyway. Or, to use a similar argument: Russian roulette is perfectly safe, since it's questionable if there's a bullet in the chamber. Here's a thought experiment: suppose a bootlegger sells millions of copies of a song at one penny apiece, and he mails all the money to the song's creator. Does the creator have any cause to be upset?
- sophacles 16y ago
  This whole response is a strawman. I never claimed the author should not be upset at copyright infringement. I never claimed that giving away copies is fine. I merely claimed that they may be different than theft. The ethics of the situation was never in the realm of discussion. The russian roulette analogy you make is doubly vile, and reeks of the worst type of intellectual dishonesty. First is based on the assumption I shot down above. Second, it has an emotional load and severe connotations which are not appropriate. (seriously, suicide games are in no way emotionally close in content to a song download, no matter how you spin it). Finally: a declaration of safe vs (presumably) not safe is a declaration of degree (of risk in this case), my declaration of theft vs not theft is not of degree, it is a declaration of category. Your analogy does not hold.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  If the creator must pay for the shipping of the pennies, it is a definite yes.
cschwarm 16y ago
> Now here is the question: when I copy your song, am I depriving you of anything? Yes, because there's a chance -- say, 5% -- that you would have bought it. So, you're depriving me of wealth and money. Buying music, software or any other digital good is a contract, a promise: I promise you a copy of my music, you promise to pay me money and don't copy it for others. If you don't like the conditions of the contract -- fine, buy elsewhere! But if you agreed to the conditions, violating them is immoral.
- evilduck 16y ago
  Your example is 5%, but if reality is closer to 0.00000000000000001%, am I still depriving you of something with those odds? How do you establish those odds and what do they even mean?
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  "But if you agreed to the conditions, violating them is immoral." You do know about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution, right?
kscaldef 16y ago
Consider the following three scenarios. They all start with Artie writing a song and offering to sell copies of it for $1. 1) Fanny copies the song from a friend (or downloads from a site for free) 2) Fanny agrees to pay Artie for the song, but then reneges after she receives the song. 3) Fanny pays Artie for the song, but then sneaks a dollar out of his wallet while he's not looking. The end state of all 3 scenarios is the same: Fanny has a copy of the song, and both have the same amount of money that they started with. However, #1 is copyright infringement, #3 is theft, and #2 is either a contract violation or theft (IANAL, blah blah blah). This doesn't mean that copyright infringement is theft in the legal sense but I think it does suggest a degree of moral equivalency, as well as supporting the assertion of the article that this particular debate is avoiding the questions that really matter.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Consider this: I buy a book. I then loan it to 5 friends. Then it turns out to have a misprint, and collectors are willing to pay top dollar for it. So I sell it at a profit. I end up with more money than the author for that book. 7 people have gotten the utility for the book, and the author only got compensated for one reading of it. Does this make me a thief? What about your local library, hundreds of people can get the utility from one copy of a book, and the author gets nothing. Now, a book an song are different, and copying allows me to potentially get simultaneous utility from the song (I listen to it at the same time as my friend). However, I bet we don't both listen to it on continuous loop, and further I bet the time spent not listening to the song by both of us in copying situation could be mostly mimicked by a complex sharing agreement. There have been many times when I had roomates where we avoided paying tons of money on music CDs by pooling in just such a scheme -- it was as if our music collection was effectively 3 times the size (before burning was common and cheap). So when does it start being theft? At the copying? At the depriving of some theoretical profit? At the point where I deviously get 66% discount on my music by sharing a piece of plastic? Why is the library not considered the moral equivalent of the song sharer?

rick888 16y ago

"If I take your car, without permission, it is stealing it. Very obviously you have been deprived of your car." Should we change the term "identity theft". Technically, it's not theft at all and nothing has been taken from you. If I have a website that shares your credit card numbers online (I'm not using the cards, just giving out the numbers), would you call this theft? Nothing has been physically taken from you. "Now here is the question: when I copy your song, am I depriving you of anything? All the electronic devices are using resources paid for by third parties. You can still sell your song just fine, my act of copying has in no way prevented you from selling the song to other people. I may or may not have bought the song, so it is questionable if I am even depriving you of money you otherwise would have made (assuming no-fee copying, e.g. torrenting)." I find that most people that don't want to call copyright infringement theft do so because they don't feel what they are doing is wrong (and want to make it seem like it's fine). It's not theft, it's counterfeiting. It would actually be better for the content owner if it was theft, because digital goods rely on the perception of value. If everyone can get your software for free, it drives the perceived value (and the actual value) to $0.

sophacles 16y ago
Identity theft is very much theft: You take away my credibility as a person, and frequently leave me with contractual debt I am forced to pay (without some serious proof fraud, and honestly, most people never recover fully from the effects of it monetarily or emotionally). [A side note: your juxtaposition of Identity theft and Car theft is very misleading and strawmany, given that the next line was about theft of services, a situation much more akin to ID theft. Please try to make your points slightly less illogically.] My credit card number is passed around the world all the time as part of transactions. It isn't a problem until someone uses it to take money from me. I would call it privacy violation, I would call it slimy, I would even call it criminal but I wouldn't call it theft. As for the rest of your argument: you are obviously just a welfare queen. You want the government to enforce your profits via copyright handouts. At this point I bet you are having a WTF moment about my use of welfare in the above paragraph. Well, here is my reasoning: copyright is as close to theft as copyright enforcement is to welfare. Any attempt to declare that the fuzzy thinking is OK in one and the same fuzzy thinking is not OK in the other is hypocrisy.
- rick888 16y ago
  "A side note: your juxtaposition of Identity theft and Car theft is very misleading and strawmany, given that the next line was about theft of services, a situation much more akin to ID theft. Please try to make your points slightly less illogically." You are the one making illogical points. ID theft is just like copyright infringement. Data is copied and used in ways that is not desired by the content holder. The original is still there. My point is that even though the data is still there (and can be copied freely), it still has an effect on the value (the perceived value of software goes down over time because more and more people can get it for free). "You take away my credibility as a person" Copyright infringement takes away the credibility of the content holder and reduces the value of that content. ", and frequently leave me with contractual debt I am forced to pay (without some serious proof fraud, and honestly, most people never recover fully from the effects of it monetarily or emotionally)." Still, under uour definition it can't be considered "theft". "At this point I bet you are having a WTF moment about my use of welfare in the above paragraph. Well, here is my reasoning: copyright is as close to theft as copyright enforcement is to welfare. Any attempt to declare that the fuzzy thinking is OK in one and the same fuzzy thinking is not OK in the other is hypocrisy." Now I know you don't know what you're talking about. Welfare is money or assistance that the government gives out (and is paid for by the tax payers). If copyright enforcement is welfare, so is our police force and fireman. I guess anyone that supports either of those are "welfare queens" too. I also never said it was theft. I said it's counterfeiting, which is much worse than theft. I wish there were no copyrights (I hope at that point I have lots of money saved up). I will just sit there and poach other companies for their ideas.

jcl 16y ago

Now, there is some more nuance than even that: if I sell your song, I am obviously depriving you of money people are willing to pay for it. If I give away your song tho, there is no money I am depriving you of -- the people who gave me $0 are not guaranteed to give you the asking price without my giveaway. This is a new one on me... Bootlegging is bad because it deprives the creator of measurable money. But giving copies away is fine because the recipients might or might not have bought it anyway. Or, to use a similar argument: Russian roulette is perfectly safe, since it's questionable if there's a bullet in the chamber. Here's a thought experiment: suppose a bootlegger sells millions of copies of a song at one penny apiece, and he mails all the money to the song's creator. Does the creator have any cause to be upset?

sophacles 16y ago
This whole response is a strawman. I never claimed the author should not be upset at copyright infringement. I never claimed that giving away copies is fine. I merely claimed that they may be different than theft. The ethics of the situation was never in the realm of discussion. The russian roulette analogy you make is doubly vile, and reeks of the worst type of intellectual dishonesty. First is based on the assumption I shot down above. Second, it has an emotional load and severe connotations which are not appropriate. (seriously, suicide games are in no way emotionally close in content to a song download, no matter how you spin it). Finally: a declaration of safe vs (presumably) not safe is a declaration of degree (of risk in this case), my declaration of theft vs not theft is not of degree, it is a declaration of category. Your analogy does not hold.
chopsueyar 16y ago
If the creator must pay for the shipping of the pennies, it is a definite yes.

cschwarm 16y ago

> Now here is the question: when I copy your song, am I depriving you of anything? Yes, because there's a chance -- say, 5% -- that you would have bought it. So, you're depriving me of wealth and money. Buying music, software or any other digital good is a contract, a promise: I promise you a copy of my music, you promise to pay me money and don't copy it for others. If you don't like the conditions of the contract -- fine, buy elsewhere! But if you agreed to the conditions, violating them is immoral.

evilduck 16y ago
Your example is 5%, but if reality is closer to 0.00000000000000001%, am I still depriving you of something with those odds? How do you establish those odds and what do they even mean?
chopsueyar 16y ago
"But if you agreed to the conditions, violating them is immoral." You do know about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution, right?

kscaldef 16y ago

Consider the following three scenarios. They all start with Artie writing a song and offering to sell copies of it for $1. 1) Fanny copies the song from a friend (or downloads from a site for free) 2) Fanny agrees to pay Artie for the song, but then reneges after she receives the song. 3) Fanny pays Artie for the song, but then sneaks a dollar out of his wallet while he's not looking. The end state of all 3 scenarios is the same: Fanny has a copy of the song, and both have the same amount of money that they started with. However, #1 is copyright infringement, #3 is theft, and #2 is either a contract violation or theft (IANAL, blah blah blah). This doesn't mean that copyright infringement is theft in the legal sense but I think it does suggest a degree of moral equivalency, as well as supporting the assertion of the article that this particular debate is avoiding the questions that really matter.

sophacles 16y ago
Consider this: I buy a book. I then loan it to 5 friends. Then it turns out to have a misprint, and collectors are willing to pay top dollar for it. So I sell it at a profit. I end up with more money than the author for that book. 7 people have gotten the utility for the book, and the author only got compensated for one reading of it. Does this make me a thief? What about your local library, hundreds of people can get the utility from one copy of a book, and the author gets nothing. Now, a book an song are different, and copying allows me to potentially get simultaneous utility from the song (I listen to it at the same time as my friend). However, I bet we don't both listen to it on continuous loop, and further I bet the time spent not listening to the song by both of us in copying situation could be mostly mimicked by a complex sharing agreement. There have been many times when I had roomates where we avoided paying tons of money on music CDs by pooling in just such a scheme -- it was as if our music collection was effectively 3 times the size (before burning was common and cheap). So when does it start being theft? At the copying? At the depriving of some theoretical profit? At the point where I deviously get 66% discount on my music by sharing a piece of plastic? Why is the library not considered the moral equivalent of the song sharer?