Quote:
Originally Posted by hacker
I see this all the time, about how we're "stealing" from the corporations if we breach DRM to be able to use the data on our device.
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If however, I take a series of high-quality digital scans of your bicycle, and recreate the exact same bicycle in my basement, have I stolen your bicycle? Are you no longer able to ride your bicycle?
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If you take a series of high-quality digital scans of my album, or my book, or my software, so that you can exactly reproduce this on your computer without paying the copyright holder, then yes, you have stolen my property. My property is not the work, per se, it is the right to be compensated by those who would utilize my work. You are as much of a thief as is the person who sneaks into a movie theater or hooks up to their neighbor's cable TV feed.
Now, if you listen to my song, and then play the same tune on your piano and sing in your voice, that is not a copyright infringement. If, however, you decide to release
your album, with my song on it, but performed by you, you are stealing my property (my right to be compensated for use of my work) and you will be held liable.
Honestly, this stuff is so simple that I can't understand why people don't get it... unless it's because they don't want to get it because they want to continue to steal while hiding behind the fiction that they aren't stealing.
Don't ask me to defend the RIAA, but I will point out that it was the growth of things like Napster that spurred RIAA on, just as it was the discovery by Microsoft that 2 out of every 3 copies of Windows was pirated which spurred them on to add online license verification.