Why do people associate copyright infringement with theft ? Last time I checked theft was depriving people of property for personal gain. Copyright infringement was copyright infringement.
When I take someone's book without someone's permission, that's theft. (-1, +1)
When I copy that book using a photocopier, it's copyright infringement. (0, +1)
I've found an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...he_end_of_.php
Quote:
I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of copyright is drawing to a close. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s inevitable. And I say this as the author of two books and over 75 columns like this one, all copyrighted.
Just 550 years ago this year, a guy named Johann Gutenberg figured out how to make large quantities of metal type in a hurry. He didn’t invent printing—the Chinese had been doing that with wooden blocks for centuries—but he did find a way to make it fast and efficient. Gutenberg changed the world and helped to bring on the Renaissance.
(...)
When enough people feel that it’s OK to do a thing, that thing ceases to be wrong in their own cultural context. You can complain about moral relativism all you like, but the facts are inescapable: that’s how people behave. When the photocopier came along, people simply didn’t think it was wrong to copy a few pages out of a book, even though it was against the law and the authors would have preferred that they buy the whole book. So eventually, the Fair Use doctrine evolved with respect to copyright materials. The law changed. It’s now OK to photocopy parts of books for educational, non-commercial use. In effect, the authors and book publishers had to give some ground in the face of the overwhelming tide of public opinion.
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