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barryem · 05-06-2015, 10:40 PM

I decided to do a little reading on some of the topics being discussed here and I ran into this article on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
that has a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States
to another article which describes a Supreme Court decision in which it was decided that copyright infringement can't be easily equated to theft. The first article also cites cases in which the prosecution was specifically told not to use pejorative words such as "piracy" or "theft" to describe copyright infringement.

So it seems that in the USA at least, courts don't recognize infringement as theft and they treat the term "piracy" as pejorative.

I'm not sure if Eschwartz was speaking about legalities or if he is in the USA. I don't think this weighs against his statements if he was speaking about the morals of the situation. But it seems that at least legally it's not theft.

I didn't realize this till today. I always felt that using words like theft and stealing were for emotional impact and didn't really belong in a logical sort of discussion but I did assume that legally they were correct. I'm glad to find out it's not so.

Barry

05-06-2015, 10:40 PM	#222
barryem Wizard Posts: 2,459 Karma: 68781975 Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Arkansas Device: Paperwhite 4	I decided to do a little reading on some of the topics being discussed here and I ran into this article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement that has a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States to another article which describes a Supreme Court decision in which it was decided that copyright infringement can't be easily equated to theft. The first article also cites cases in which the prosecution was specifically told not to use pejorative words such as "piracy" or "theft" to describe copyright infringement. So it seems that in the USA at least, courts don't recognize infringement as theft and they treat the term "piracy" as pejorative. I'm not sure if Eschwartz was speaking about legalities or if he is in the USA. I don't think this weighs against his statements if he was speaking about the morals of the situation. But it seems that at least legally it's not theft. I didn't realize this till today. I always felt that using words like theft and stealing were for emotional impact and didn't really belong in a logical sort of discussion but I did assume that legally they were correct. I'm glad to find out it's not so. Barry Last edited by barryem; 05-06-2015 at 10:44 PM.