3 ms·

Argh. I can't stand it when people conflate theft and copyright infringement. They are different things and it's lazy to treat them the same. I tried to expl

• mrtron 18y ago
  For someone with the whole Internet as their resource, I would consider it beyond lazy. It is ignorant to treat them the same. Copyright infringement has been responsible in increases for 'victim', both in exposure and revenues. Theft has never (that I am aware of) benefited the victim.
  • andreyf 18y ago
    Copyright infringement has been responsible in increases for 'victim... Good example, but I think it's more important to point out where copyright and property law come from - that property is accepted in our society as a fundamental right, while copyright is monopoly power which our government may grant "for a limited time" "to promote the progress of useful arts". See here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.article...
    • davidw 18y ago
      Precisely! It's supposed to be a compromise between "no IP" (where IP is copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc...) and some sort of permanent and ironclad possession of works and ideas. I believe the balance has tilted too far in favor of the producers of IP, and that it should be shifted back the other way, but not eliminated. In a more general sense, the problem is "provisioning of public goods": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good Creating property where none naturally exists is one solution, but there are others (some good, some bad, depends on the type of good).