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Copyright infringement is theft
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The United States Supreme Court doesn't agree (Dowling v. US, 473 US 207):
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Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
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Copyright is a limited right granted to you by your country because your fellow citizens happen to think that it promotes innovation in the useful arts if you're given the exclusive right to reap the profits of an original creation for awhile. It can be and sometimes is revoked under the doctrine of copyright misuse.
Between copyright and DRM, I think that so little is going to be preserved of the cultural output of the ancient 21st-century American civilization when the archaeologists dig it up 3,000 years from now that they're going to think we had some kind of dark age.