4 ms·

"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". Te

by 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.
  - sophacles 16y ago
    Identity theft is a real theft. When I copy a song, or a bit of data or whatnot, and then use it, the only consequence to the copyright holder is potential loss of a sale. A sale is not something that is guaranteed -- a sale not made does not take something from the owner. If an unmade sale was in any way theft, then rude sales clerks would constantly be going to jail for theft. Identity theft on the other hand does real damage to people. A stolen identity has components of "potential damage", this is true. It also doesn't change the fact that damage is realized -- changes to credit situations cause real life fees and interest rate changes. Withdrawals from bank accounts are real, not hypothetical losses to the original person. Once again, there is a difference between "causes a loss" and "does not cause an increase". Theft is simply causes a loss. Are you now going to claim that withdrawals from bank accounts don't actually count either, they are after all just data being copied around. As for: Copyright infringement takes away the credibility of the content holder and reduces the value of that content. : Are you sure it isn't that copyright artificially inflates the value of content? Now about your last statement: you and every other person would try to poach the leaders. Here is the fundamental flaw with that business model: should someone be actually innovative, you could never catch them. You would constantly be losing to them because by the time you get the copy working, they have moved on to the next step of progress leaving you and your competitors to fight over the scraps. The welfare thing: copyright is assistance handed out by the government, in the form of "if you are stupid enough to base your earnings on something easily copyable, we'll force people to pay you anyway." Police on the other hand are there to stop people from causing harm to another. Most of the scope of that is outside of the realm of copyright by a long shot. The little overlapping bit is this: when my property is stolen (actual property, earned an in existence, not the hypothetical copyright stuff) they deal with it. This is not the government giving me a handout, it is them providing a service I pay them for. (Welfare programs are the government giving you a service I pay for).
lutorm 16y ago
You are right, "identity theft" would be more accurately called "identity copyright infringement". Funny.

by rick888 16y ago

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.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Identity theft is a real theft. When I copy a song, or a bit of data or whatnot, and then use it, the only consequence to the copyright holder is potential loss of a sale. A sale is not something that is guaranteed -- a sale not made does not take something from the owner. If an unmade sale was in any way theft, then rude sales clerks would constantly be going to jail for theft. Identity theft on the other hand does real damage to people. A stolen identity has components of "potential damage", this is true. It also doesn't change the fact that damage is realized -- changes to credit situations cause real life fees and interest rate changes. Withdrawals from bank accounts are real, not hypothetical losses to the original person. Once again, there is a difference between "causes a loss" and "does not cause an increase". Theft is simply causes a loss. Are you now going to claim that withdrawals from bank accounts don't actually count either, they are after all just data being copied around. As for: Copyright infringement takes away the credibility of the content holder and reduces the value of that content. : Are you sure it isn't that copyright artificially inflates the value of content? Now about your last statement: you and every other person would try to poach the leaders. Here is the fundamental flaw with that business model: should someone be actually innovative, you could never catch them. You would constantly be losing to them because by the time you get the copy working, they have moved on to the next step of progress leaving you and your competitors to fight over the scraps. The welfare thing: copyright is assistance handed out by the government, in the form of "if you are stupid enough to base your earnings on something easily copyable, we'll force people to pay you anyway." Police on the other hand are there to stop people from causing harm to another. Most of the scope of that is outside of the realm of copyright by a long shot. The little overlapping bit is this: when my property is stolen (actual property, earned an in existence, not the hypothetical copyright stuff) they deal with it. This is not the government giving me a handout, it is them providing a service I pay them for. (Welfare programs are the government giving you a service I pay for).

lutorm 16y ago

You are right, "identity theft" would be more accurately called "identity copyright infringement". Funny.