Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
It's been discussed a few times around these parts. 
For the record, simply depriving someone of their legal property without permission, whether you gain from that act or not, constitutes theft. Gain is largely irrelevant. |
The reason I emphasised the "personal gain" part is that merely depriving someone of his property without permission is close enough to simple destruction of property. Unless you're a jerk, there's no fun in doing that ;-).
Quote:
The general consensus among MR members (if I may be so bold) is that the inherent and practical differences between physical property and electronic documents still need to be addressed by the world at large, and an agreement reached, as to what should be bound under copyright infringement and/or theft, or if new rules need to be applied, to enact an acceptable global stance on the matter.
IOW, it hasn't really been decided.
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I see. These articles support my point of view:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080306/003240458.shtml
(IP is neither Intellectual nor Property)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...14250290.shtml
(Differences between copyright and physical property)
In other words, I don't think any consensus can be easily reached. Copying digital data costs very little, and there's no scarcity of goods. On the other hand, it's nice when book authors get something for their effort. On the
third hand, was the world really worse before MTV ?