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Originally Posted by pwalker8
No copyright infringement has nothing to do with the idea of copyright as property, though the fact that it's an entirely different set of case law with very different enforcement mechanisms and penalties than thief per se supports the idea that copyright is not property.
The copyright as property rhetorical device is purely about selling the idea that the government granted monopoly should be extended ad infinitum. So far, it doesn't include a push to change the enforcement mechanisms, though I wouldn't be shocked if it was the next step.
As far as support of the definition that I use, all one has to do is look in a dictionary pre 1970's. Even intangible property was defined as stocks and bonds, IP was added later. The push to expand the term property to intellectual property didn't really take hold in the US until the 70's, which is oddly enough when the push for the US to sign the Berne Convention and get protections for US movies and music world wide.
Perhaps the sky is blue, but you are arguing it's green because you are color blind and can't tell the difference between the two (had a teacher with blue/green color blindness).
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Sorry, but, no. See
Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. 591 (1834)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/33/591/ , (130 years prior to the 1970's), in which Justice McLean stated (writing for the majority):
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since the statute of 8 Anne, the literary property of an author in his works can only be asserted under the statute. . . . That an author, at common law, has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress against any one who deprives him of it, or by improperly obtaining a copy endeavours to realise a profit by its publication cannot be doubted; but this is a very different right from that which asserts a perpetual and exclusive property in the future publication of the work, after the author shall have published it to the world."
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(bold emphasis added).
That a typical dictionary didn't discuss copyright as property is
utterly meaningless. There are
innumerable legal terms, statutes, etc., that you would not find discussed in the OED (unabridged) today. That is irrelevant.
Copyright has been a
PROPERTY right under all applicable laws and statutes and Acts since
the Statute of Anne. (And I'm not even getting into the earlier laws and acts, which also discuss it, like the Licensing Act of 1662.) With all due respect, you really
are arguing that the sky is not blue and that water is not wet.
Hitch