[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

He's not earning anything if I pick up the book from the free books box in the mailroom, either. And the publisher has no way to measure demand. Is that also stealing from him?

*WHAT* would I be stealing from the author if I download his book from the darknet? Do you assume that I would have otherwise bought the book full-price new? I almost never do that. Never for leisure/entertainment reading.

So, if you were never going to buy a Mercedes in the first place, it's okay to steal it? I mean, what the heck, you were never going to buy it new, anyway, right? Ridiculous that anyone would get upset about the idea that they should have been entitled to the money for that car.

If the publisher has half a brain, it's monitoring common torrent sites and keeping track of which books are popular. Note: Dan Brown's newest book was torrented *madly*, and sold madly. If those torrented copies meant lost sales, you'd think he'd have *less* noticeable income because of them. Instead, over and over, what's torrented most is what sells most.

How much richer do you think Rowling would be if her books had not been digitized by her fans?

Yeah, what's torrented most is what's WANTED most, and it's taken illegally and used by people who have no regard for personal property. It's laughable to think that the torrenting causes sales; the torrenting is because the property is hot and people want it without paying for it. This argument is akin to: if three dozen people come into your restaurant, eat, and then run out, stiffing you, the restaurant owner, on the bill, BUT, they run around and tell everyone how great the food they stole from you is, well, then, that's okay because somehow, all that stolen food will translate into greater sales for you. That's your argument?

It's not theft, because copyright isn't about property--it's about a monopoly on certain business transactions.

Oh, horsepucky. Talk about rationalization! I wonder how quick you'd be to jump on your soapbox about how copyright is a "monopoly" if you'd sweated years over a book you'd written and a bunch of your buddies torrented it, because, after all, why should you get any money for it? They should all get it freely, right, so that you wouldn't become a big fat-cat capitalist? With a "monopoly" on work YOU had created? If you craft a table and chairs yourself, is it a "monopoly" for you to refuse to give it to someone for nothing? If they take it from you, is it "theft," or is it "only" a civil case? You bet your booties it's THEFT.

It's not theft because you can't show how much was taken from one person and given to another. If I download Harry Potter And the Sorcerer's Stone, how much money is Rowling out? Does it change that value since I've already paid for it in print? (And this thread is about out-of-print books. If I download Chumbley's Azoetia, how much money are the author's heirs missing out on?)

Oh, that's rich. Of course it can be proven. Rowling is out precisely what her royalty on that stolen book would have been. It ain't rocket science. And a LOT of this thread has NOTHING to do with out-of-print books, and as I pointed out very clearly above, OOP doesn't mean that the author is dead or not entitled to his royalties.

"Just wait for it" is reasonable advice when we're talking months or maybe a few years. "Just wait until it hits the public domain when your grandchildren have become parents" is not.

What part of "it's not YOURS" don't you understand? You are NOT entitled to it for free. Period. It's not a lifesaving medical treatment. You won't die without it. It's a recreational item. The idea that just because you don't want to have to WAIT for it means you can take it is simply ludicrous. Does this apply to everything else? I mean, hell, you might have to wait 20 years to make enough money to buy that Porsche you want. Will you steal that, too?

And again... there's no "taking" involved here. Nothing's being taken *away* from anyone. My taking pictures of your car isn't the same as stealing your car. Using those pictures to build a copy of your car isn't stealing, either. You may no longer have the only car with that paint job, but removing your uniqueness is not the same as theft--even if you have a legal right to be unique.

Utter codswallop. A picture of a car isn't the value of the car and it's not the car itself. Taking a digital copy of a book isn't a "picture" of the cover of the book; it's the book itself. Copying someone else's paint job isn't the same thing as taking someone's book, and you know it. That argument is completely specious.

If someone takes my TV, I don't have it. If someone stares in the window & watches the TV channel I'm watching, I'm not missing out on anything.

And if you read a copy of someone else's bought and paid for book over their shoulder, sure. But that's not what you're talking about doing. If someone steals your TV, you have to have enough money to replace it. In fact, you're in better shape than an author, because you have insurance. When an author's property is stolen--his work--he doesn't have the money to replace it, does he? Because it was stolen. Because you didn't PAY for it. And he can't get insurance to replace his lost sales and revenues.

I haven't taken his book. Haven't broken into his house; I don't have access to his printouts. I have taken *words*--which are not his property; the English language has no owner--and arranged them in the same order as he did. I have striven to inspire the same ideas he did when arranging them.

Yes you have. You've taken his book. Pretending that you haven't is just that--pretense. This is the same-old same-old justification, for the same-old reasons; that "intellectual property" is somehow inferior in property rights to real and personal property. I'll bet if you had the idea for the next iPod, the next gizmo that revolutionized the world, you'd be singing a very different tune. And if his words, "arranged in the same order" that he used them, have no value, then why do YOU want them? Since you WANT them, it seems reasonable to assume that that means that they have value to YOU. A value you've stolen from the rightful owner.

That doesn't mean it's non-harmful or legal. We have plenty of ways to harm people, to cost them income, that aren't theft. (If I slash his tires, I haven't stolen anything from him, but I may still be liable for the cost of the tires *and* the lost work from not having a vehicle.)

The argument "it's not THEFT" doesn't mean "I condone this act & believe there's nothing wrong with it." (Y'know what? It's not rape, either, to take an author's brain-baby and let hundreds of people fondle it.)

We'd just like crimes & torts to be labeled accurately. We can't come to any agreements on what the problems are and how to fix them, if we can't agree on a description of what's happening.

I posted the Criminal Code in my previous post.

If you want to be firm in your moral belief that copyright infringement is "theft," you're welcome to do so. If you'd like to stop problematic distribution and widespread torrenting, you'll have to figure out how to make it seem wrong to the people who are doing it, because there is *no* level of internet interference that can crack down on that many people, in that many locations... you can drive it farther underground (make it *even more elite* for those who like to be involved), but that's about all.

To stop "the torrenting problems," you need to convince the people doing it that it's wrong. And you won't do that by calling it something it's not, by insisting that every download is a lost sale.

This argument is akin to the idea that if enough people think something's harmless--like racial discrimination, for example--well, that's okay. If we call it something else, something less offensive, like "separate but equal," hey! That's the ticket! So we'll call it "copyright infringement," which means it isn't REALLY theft, right? Then people can tell themselves that it's okay, and then the authors who are being stolen FROM have the burden of trying to convince the "infringers," (heaven forbid we say THIEVES) that it's really thievery--which now they can't do because it's not called THEFT, it's called "infringement," and a bunch of misinformed people on the internet go around telling other campaigners for torrenting that it's not REALLY a crime, right? ("We don't have discrimination--that would be illegal!! We practice "separate but equal." That's NOT illegal.") Right.

You know what's a lot more like real theft? It's when Congress took away thousands of works that belonged to us, the people, by declaring their copyrights were retroactively extended, despite the fact that, when they were published, it was under the agreement that they'd be monopolized for a maximum of 56 years. Everything published before 1954 should be in the public domain. Most things published before 1982--everything not registered with the US copyright office--should be in the public domain.

Return *those* items to us, the public, and we'll talk about respecting the new copyrights.

Because right now, we've got no reason to believe anything will *ever* enter the public domain.

And if it doesn't enter the public domain, BUY IT. If you want it THAT badly, pay for a copy that somebody has for sale on EBay, or Amazon, or wherever. Ah, but therein lies the rub, right? You don't WANT TO PAY FOR IT. This isn't about Congress and the Public Domain; this isn't about OOP; it's about getting something for nothing. Those items for which you're demanding the "return" to "the public," were never yours to begin with. That's the point. They belong to the authors who created them, and it's that author's right, or his family's right, to do with them as they will, whether or not it suits YOU.

Like I said two posts ago: take your arguments and substitute the word "car" or "tv" or "iPad." You'll see how specious the idea of taking someone else's property really is.

Unless, of course, you think that if someone came along and "borrowed" your laptop without your permission, and took ALL the data off of it, wiped it clean and gave it back to you, that would be okay, right? Because they're only WORDS, and numbers, and 1's and 0's. Not anything of VALUE--right? And if a co-worker at your job steals your idea and uses it to get that promotion you want--it's only your words, right? Arranged like you would have arranged them? You don't have a copyright on those words, that would have expressed that idea to your boss--right? Isn't that what you said, above? So your co-worker would be perfectly within his rights to "infringe" your business idea and use it. After all--it's not a CRIME.