Is Copyright Infringement Theft?
copyhype.com
copyhype.com
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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).
There are plenty of small companies that are struggling to get profitable. If I had a company with more manpower and money, it wouldn't take much to profit from a good opportunity. Especially if there was no law in place to protect the other company.
"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. "
Like I said in my previous post. It's not just a potential loss of a sale. When something is pirated enough, the perceived value approaches $0.
"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"
Pirating software causes real world damage to the original content creator. If they paid thounsands (or millions) of dollars in development and marketing costs, there won't be much chance to make those costs up.
It also shouldn't be called theft. You based your entire point on the fact that theft has to actually take something away from someone. When you "steal" an identity, nothing is really taken. Information is copied an
There are plenty of small companies that are struggling to get profitable. If I had a company with more manpower and money, it wouldn't take much to profit from a good idea. Especially if there was no law in place to protect the other company. This happens all the time right now, even with these laws in place.
"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. "
Like I said in my previous post. It's not just a potential loss of a sale. When something is pirated enough, the perceived value approaches $0.
"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"
Pirating software causes real world damage to the original content creator. If they paid thounsands (or millions) of dollars in development and marketing costs, there won't be much chance to make those costs up.
You based your entire point on the fact that theft has to actually take something away from someone. When you "steal" an identity, nothing is really taken. Information is copied and used, but it's still there.
"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."
It's funny how you are arguing for the right to take someone else's hard-earned work and dilute it to the point where they may not be able to make a living. It's an amazingly selfish and entitled attitude.
As for your ramblings on identity theft: I think we have a mismatch of definitions. For me Identity Theft is not information copying, it is using that information to cause loss to the person, e.g. withdrawing from that person's savings. The copying of the information is not the theft, it happens all the time without negative consequences. You are defining identity theft as "having the information, whether it is used or not".
You are being intellectually dishonest again here. You use the emotional topic of ID theft, which is a broad term containing several different sub-components, and then redefine it to be isomorphic to copyright infringement. Even when clarifications to what actions and subcomponents of ID theft are actual theft, you insist on ignoring those portions to make some other point. In short, stop being a wanton fool.
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?
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.
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.
You do know about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution, right?
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.
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?
Perhaps one adviser will argue that theft and copy-right infringement should both be criminal matters and attract the same penalties despite the differences.
Perhaps another adviser will argue that theft and copy-right infringement should be criminal and civil matters respectively because of the differences.
Perhaps a third will try to elide the differences between rival and non-rival goods by calling both misappropriations theft.
You should kick the third adviser out of you council because the difference between rival goods and non-rival goods is central to the discussion. Burying the point by stretching the meaning of the word theft is an obstacle to a sensible discussion not a contribution.
Was bootlegging immoral? It certainly could be, but prohibition created such an oppressive environment that it was necessary. The same goes with Micky Mouse copyright law. Decades old TV shows lost to time, no name bands disappearing from the shelves at Walmart, and Wedding Photos aging beyond the point of restoration require we infringe out of cultural preservation.
Describing it as theft, or a crime is not relevant. The infringement is necessary.
I just have a hard time getting too worked up about what label we attach to copyright. And I suspect most non-philosophers agree. Consider this thought experiment: Go to a studio head and say, "I've got a deal for you. I'll give you your copyright wish list: repeal first sale, make Justice Ginsburg's concurrence in Grokster the controlling opinion, delete Cablevision, Perfect 10 v. Amazon (and a few other Perfect 10 cases while we're at it) from the law books, and codify a "making available" right. But here's the catch: From now on, you are forever forbidden from referring to copyright as 'property,' and must instead call it a 'set of social relationships.'" Or go to a copyright skeptic, and say, "I've got a deal for you. I'll give you your copyright wish list: reduce the term of copyright back to 14 years, expand fair use, eliminate the derivative works right, and repeal the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. But there's the catch: From now on, you must refer to copyright as property; no more of this 'set of social relationships' mumbo-jumbo." I'm confident both the studio head and the copyright skeptic would take those deals in a heartbeat. Ultimately, it's the substance, not the label, that matters.
My question is: why the hell do you think the "studio head" and the "copyright skeptic" are arguing about terminology in the first place?
The way I see it, Hart is basically saying "If you were offered to have things your way, but had to give up terminology, you would do it in a heartbeat, so why do you argue about terminology in the first place?" Which, to me, sounds naive.
The reason people are arguing about legal definitions of terminology in the first place is because legal terms have certain definitions which govern how decisions are made in court.
http://www.amazon.com/Common-Air-Revolution-Art-Ownership/dp...
Also, since we love hypothetical situations, how about this:
I create a replication device that can create an identical copy of any physical object.
Walking down the street, I stop in front of your brand new Lexus and make a copy of the car for myself. I then drive away in the replica.
Now, did I steal your car? Is that larceny? Or did I violate some other law? What if it was a Model T manufactured in 1908?
Of course, if new laws need to be created/revised/abrogated to treat IP violations as acts of larceny, clearly the original laws were never intended to equate the two. Otherwise, additional legislation would not be necessary (DMCA, ACTA, etc...)
For example, the scale of thievery/infringement goes roughly from:
- Stealing physical media (= traditionally illegal, one is left without)
- Copying to self or a friend (= should be legal: it's none of anyone else's business what I and my friends share among ourselves. And I have a limited number of friends anyway)
- Copying to a "friend" or internet peer (= question mark; I think it should be legal but many don't)
- Selling copies to a friend (= should be illegal as I would be pocketing actual money and the original author wouldn't)
- Selling copies to a "friend" or internet peer (= definitely illegal, I'm making money out of others' work)
Thus, the culprit gray area is copying to others without a fee. It's also the point where the most arguments (to both directions!) are about.
I don't have the answer. I do, however, have one point: no law should be based on speculation.
If you could clearly show that someone would have bought a copyrighted piece but got it for free instead, only then there might be some case for the original copyright holder to be entitled to some money, capped at most to the regular list price of the copyrighted work in particular.
However, if you can't show that then I think it's pretty clear that nothing substantial has happened and, also, nobody could ever be convicted in that situation.
Last week, I visited the Cincinnati Museum Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Museum_Center_at_Uni...) and saw the traveling exhibit, "America I Am", presented by Tavis Smiley.
As I entered the exhibition, a museum attendant informed me I was not allowed to take any videos or pictures of anything within the exhibit (with or without flash).
As I walked through the exhibit, I noticed a copy of the Declaration of Independence. For those of you unaware, this document was created in approximately 1776. The copy on exhibit is one of 25 remaining copies of approx. 200.
If I were to take a picture of the Declaration of Independece, would that be theft? Would it be copyright infringement?
Ironically, at the end of the exhibit, visitors have an opportunity to record a video of themselves, which is then uploaded and distributed to the "America I Am" website (http://www.americaiam.org).
Copyright needs global reform.
Patent law requires global reform.
And ACTA is about as far from the appropriate reform as one could possibly be. But that's what you get when you leave these things to politicians who have zero experience of them. And have zero buy-in and ultimately zero responsibility for them. They have no idea of which they speak. But they aren't going to admit it, are they?
Caveat: I own both copyrighted and patented works. I say: reform, reform, reform.
Beyond that the issue gets a bit hazy.
You said "No-one ought be allowed to...".
Well, to do those kinds of things, we need laws, and ways of enforcing those laws.
So, to enforce "mandatory attribution" to an author of a work, would require some sort of legal mechanism to do so.
Protecting the author's "moral right" involves him or her having some sort of protection by the law, in the same vein the law protects citizens from rape, murder, and other violent acts.
My point being, simply because there is a law or a "moral right" to prevent certain acts, does not and cannot stop those acts from occurring, although it may reduce the frequency of those acts.
Lastly, I was unaware this thread mentioned anything about "getting rid of copyrights", particularly when you "think it is necessary to recognize an author's moral right to the work or, if you wish, mandatory attribution."
I think that crowds like this find the "lolz it's not theft, it's infringement" argument to be a particularly apt one. I've been guilty of such things myself, after all, it's technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
However, I think this makes an interesting distinction: it doesn't really matter, from a 'hearts and minds' perspective. Neither side really 'wins' from this kind of argument, because the argument fundamentally isn't about the definition of theft. It's unfortunate that 'pro idea freedom' (two can play this game) advocates are effectively slandered by suggesting that they're 'thieves' or 'pirates,' but I'm not sure that an overtly semantic argument is the best way to get around this.
I think it's better to make it a 'stealthily semantic' one, that is, don't talk about definitions, just move the dialogue to the core point: creators do not have a _right_ to profit, and therefore, they're not deprived of anything through infringement. It's not about theft, because they had nothing in the first place, ideas are not property.
Even if you disagree with this line of reasoning, I think everyone can agree that a real, actual dialogue is better than what appears on the surface like quibbling. Yes, one can still be 'anti-theft' and 'anti-copyright', and theft and infringement are semantically distinct. But it's just not a deep enough level of discourse to truly explore the issue: we're seeing a natural progression of technology and culture, with many powerful, entrenched interests. It's a really, really important topic, and deserves more than soundbite arguments.
Meanwhile, the abolitionists have the hard task of finding examples. Then, the defenders alway have an objections to all the examples that the abolitionists did find, which are diverse range of examples. For example, popular band business model wouldn't work for small, in between-size, and vice-versa or mock business models that sell ancillary goods such as T-shirt.
All the objections by IP defenders is nice and all, except it's irrational. There is no attempt on behalf of IP defenders to gather experimental data, any kind. There is no attempt to think but refute every single abolitionist's suggestions. They make any excuses for staying still, good or bad.
For the reason of criticizing without offering much in return, few IP opponents have the ability to force a model update in me or at least an ample amount of models to investigate. One recent model update was making me take into account that monopoly profit can be use to maintain marketshare against copyfree and copyleft opponents. Another model was that weak DRM technologies sometime does increase sales though I didn't do much reading into it.