Quote:
Originally Posted by PKFFW
You are wrong. It doesn't matter how many times you repeat yourself, you are still wrong.
Under the law, copyright infringement is not theft.
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Depends on the jurisdiction. And on what precisely you mean by "theft." But a lot of courts seem to generally disagree:
"And deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft. " (Grokster, US Sct. 2005)
"The fair use doctrine is not a license for corporate theft, empowering a court to ignore a copyright whenever it determines the underlying work contains material of possible public importance." (Harper & Row v. Nation, US Sct 1985).
"A CATV that builds an antenna to pick up telecasts in Area B and then transmits it by cable to Area A is reproducing the copyrighted work, not pursuant to a license from the owner of the copyright, but by theft." (Teleprompter v. CBS, US Sct. 1974).
"There is little doubt that the largest opportunity for copyright theft is through peer-to-peer (“P2P”) software." (In re Verizon Internet, US Dist. Ct. D.C., 2003).
"The matter before the court concerns the boundary between sharing and theft, personal use and the unauthorized world-wide distribution of copyrighted music and sound recordings." (A&M v. Napster, N.D. Calif., 2000).
There is a lot of legislation that made similar points, although I'll grant that the use of the word "theft" in the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004" may have been motivated in part because it helps spell "PIRATE".