Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
But "depriving a creator control over his creation" is not against the law. Stealing is. And copyright infringement is. And slander is.
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"Depriving a creator control over his creation" (without their consent) violates copyright law... so it is illegal. If I write a novel and copyright it, I have the right to withhold that novel from specific use or any use at all, as long as the copyright is in effect. Violating that is against the law.
I think a lot of people are missing the boat when they spend so much time arguing that theft can only happen with physical property. For one thing, there are precedents for the "stealing" of electronic creative works, such as re-broadcasting a copywritten TV show, like the Super Bowl, in a public place for profit... or playing copywritten music over the web without compensation to the publishers. Of course no physical property was stolen, but it is still against the law, because it violates copyright law. So the discussion over whether copying an e-book should or should not be legal has already been settled by precedent.
Yes, copying a digital file of copywritten work for personal profit (or to deprive the copyright owner of potential profit), without the copyright owner's consent, is illegal.
Personally, I think the above statement is
almost watertight... it does leave up to further refining the question of what constitutes "depriving of
potential profit," and that needs to be addressed to establish what people can and cannot legally do with digital files they've bought... which is the real issue being discussed here, I think.
Secondly, splitting hairs over the choice of words is largely irrelevant. It's semantics, and seems to be based on whether the arguer wants copyright infringement to sound like a very bad thing, or only a slightly bad thing. (And please, no "badcrime." Sounds like you've been re-reading
1984 too many times!
) Whether it's a car or a candy bar, theft is theft. You might as well call it what it is.