Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
Interesting...so if I go to a pawn shop and buy something that later turns out to be stolen...am I committing a crime?
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I used to like looking for old computers at pawn shops and one day I found a fairly new Dell Laptop which was currently selling new for about $1500 in perfect condition for $300. This was in the days when computers cost a lot more than they do now.
Anyway I bought it and when I got home I found that there was a password needed to access the settings. I called Dell for help and they said they'd have to contact the previous owner first, so I waited for them to call me back.
The call I got back was from the previous owner, a business owner who had assigned that laptop to one of her salesmen and had fired him a week earlier. She hadn't thought about the laptop when she did. She suggested I call the police or she would.
I called them and they agreed to meet me at the pawn shop along with the real owner of the laptop. I got there, gave her the computer and they suggested the pawn shop owner refund my $300. When he wouldn't they called in for a warrant to search his store. He decided to give me the refund.
There was never any question of me being in trouble. No-one thought I had done anything wrong, either actually or technically. Everyone worked together and resolved the situation. The guy who sold the laptop to the pawnshop was arrested later. It turns out he was related to the pawn shop owner so he also got arrested. All was well. I have no idea where things went after that.
If you buy something that's been stolen you haven't committed a crime unless it can be shown that you knew it was stolen. Then you're in trouble.
I'm no lawyer but I do think the word "steal" implies taking something from someone in such a way that he no longer has it. Book pirates aren't stealing a book. Neither the uploader nor the downloader is stealing if my definition is correct. It may be that they're depriving the publisher and author of the profit from a sale but that's not certain. To prove that it seems you'd have to prove that person would have purchased the book if they couldn't have downloaded it.
I'm not saying piracy isn't wrong. It is. But I don't think "stealing" is an apt description. I think it's used because of it's emotional impact and not because it's really descriptive.
Of course language changes with time and use and I suspect that the meaning of "stealing" might change to actually include piracy. in college I wrote a paper on why the word "fast" can mean either unable to move at all or moving rapidly. The word "silly" in earlier times meant "blessed".
Barry