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I see we have our monthly copyright law debate thread.
1) Copyright infringement is not "theft."
2) That doesn't mean it's legal or ethical; just that the proper label of the crime or tort involved is not "theft."
3) Part of the reason for "theft" not being the right label, is that "theft" means you *no longer have* whatever is stolen.
4) Another part is that theft has penalties equivalent to what was stolen + reasonable penalty fee; stealing a CD = ~hundred dollar fine; unauthorized copying of a CD = up to $150,000 fine.
5) None of this is going to convince anyone who's been involved in these arguments before; we do this to either discover new phrasings for what we already believe, or give newcomers to the debate an idea of the range of issues involved.
6) Copyright law is seriously broken, and has been since the first computers went online. There is absolutely no way for individuals to enforce copyrights of their noncommercial works. (If, for example, I wanted to say, "I do not grant permission for my posts to be copied to AOL's servers," I have no way to enforce that, even thought I didn't post on AOL's servers.)
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