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Agreed. Imho this argument that copying is not stealing does a real disservice to the cause. No, you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stea

• zeteo 15y ago
  >you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers [...] that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft. I think our metaphors of property and theft are stretched to the breaking limit with digital content. When social rules first appeared, it was clearly wrong if Fred Flintstone made himself an awesome hat and Barney Rubble took it away; but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own. Copyright and patents only appeared in the 18th century. They extended the notion of property into a sphere where it hadn't applied in the previous millenia. They also relied on the fact that, at the time, books and technical drawings couldn't be reproduced by the average person. Now here we are in a new millenium, with intellectual content trivially easy to duplicate, and we try to stretch some already strained notions much further. I think we need a paradigm change in this matter (and there are some interesting attempts going on out there). The RIAA's version of morality is not handed down from Heaven, you know: its rectitude is at least as questionable as its practicality.
  • furyofantares 15y ago
    > but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own Actually, I think it was quite clearly a good thing if Barney made his own copy and they both had dry heads. This remains true until everyone decides it's better for Fred to spend all his time designing hats rather than hunting, and we need a way to be sure to feed Fred. For this to happen we need technology to advance to the point where we have a surplus of the more basic needs, but also the cost of producing hats has to be cheap compared to the cost of designing hats. Otherwise a significant part of Fred's value is producing the hats, which is something he can easily get food for since it would require force to coerce him to produce a hat, while it requires no force to copy a hat's design.
    • zeteo 15y ago
      >This remains true until everyone decides it's better for Fred to spend all his time designing hats rather than hunting Specialization of labor became widespread around 3500BC, with the appearance of civilization. After that point, potters, goldsmiths, tailors etc. kept on freely copying designs from each other and "got away" with it for over 5000 years. (In times when punishment for theft was often physical mutilation.) If there was something obviously immoral about "stealing" intellectual "property", someone would have noticed, I think.
      • ktizo 15y ago
        Thomas Jefferson's take on the subject of intellectual property is interesting to say the least and has a nice clarity to it; "It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices." from, The Letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743-1826 http://odur.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl220.htm http://odur.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl220.htm
• JackC 15y ago
  This particular trained lawyer wishes that we could never talk about whether copyright infringement is stealing, ever again. It's 100% legally irrelevant. There are laws against stealing physical property. Copyright infringement doesn't violate them. There are laws against copyright infringement. Copyright infringement does violate them. The question of whether "stealing" is good shorthand for "copyright infringement" is a total waste of time. The real point is whether the copyright infringement laws are good laws. In fact, let's get technical about it. Here's what's going on under the hood. Both areas of law relate to the idea of "alienable rights" -- stuff that only you are entitled to do, that you can sell or give away so other people can do.[1] For example, I "own" my bike. That means I have a bunch of rights over it. I can exclude anyone else from riding it. I can destroy it. I can sell the right to destroy it. I can sell the right to ride it on alternate Thursdays. I can sell the right to sell the right to ride it. Or I can sell the whole bike so someone else gets the whole bundle of rights. Lawyers, with a flair for the dramatic, analogize this set of rights over the bike to a "bundle of sticks" that can be separated or kept together. Example 2: I rent an apartment. My landlord "owns" the property, but she's sold me the temporary, exclusive right to decide who can come on it and who can't. I can let neighborhood kids run through the backyard or tell them to take off. But I can't charge other people to sleep here -- she hasn't sold me that right. Example 3: I "own" this comment. I can sell or give away the right to display it at ycombinator.com (in fact, that's what I'll effectively do when I click "reply"). I can sell the right to print it worldwide in any medium. I can sell the right to make a movie adaptation. I can sell the right to distribute it without my name attached -- or with your name attached. Or I can sell the whole thing and let someone else dispose of all these rights ... So when we talk stealing and infringement, we're talking about violations of someone else's alienable rights. When you take away all of my alienable rights over my bike, that's called stealing. When you take them temporarily, it's "wrongful appropriation." When you take my right to exclude people from my property, that's called trespass. When you take my right to decide who rents my bike, it's theft of services. When you take my right to decide where this comment gets published, it's copyright infringement. So at this point the copyright debate becomes a little clearer, right? The question is which alienable rights should attach to instantiated ideas (intellectual property), and how long should each right last, and what should be the consequences for infringing each right, and can we give artists something that works as well for them as these exclusive alienable rights, and so on. When people say "copyright infringement is stealing," it's intuitive, emotional shorthand for "the same arguments that justify the rights attached to physical property also justify the rights attached to instantiated ideas." When people say "nuh uh," that's shorthand for "nuh uh." So the answer to whether copyright infringement is stealing is that there's a bunch of reasons we attach various rights to physical property, and there's a bunch of reasons we attach various rights to IP, and some rights and reasons apply to both and some reasons apply to just one or the other. Which is to say, it's a pointless question. The analogy is kind of right and kind of wrong, in a totally unhelpful way. The useful question is whether the particular rights bundled into "copyright" are the best way to do the things we're trying to do. Seriously, when I think about it, I can't believe how many hours have been spent on the internet debating this pointless question. The next time you're tempted to start, just link to this comment instead. Then take that time to make something. Anything you like. Even a LOLcat or a drawing in MSPaint. Put it in the public domain. It'll be better for the world. -- [1] You know how the Declaration of Independence says we're all endowed with "inalienable" rights? That's inalienable as in the opposite of the "alienable" rights I discussed above. That's why you can't sell yourself into slavery -- your right to liberty isn't alienable. The More You Know.
• paulsutter 15y ago
  So we should be able to copy mobile apps for free too? What about piracy of luxury goods, that's ok too right because hey they're just copying?