Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Copyright is a quaint notion with regard to intellectual and electronic property.
|
Copyrighted (and the related patent & trademark laws) are the *only* notion with regard to intellectual property; it doesn't exist outside of those laws. "Electronic property" is a bit blurrier (because it's often tied to physical devices), but inasmuch as it can be copied, it's covered by the same laws.
You can "steal" Windows 7 by breaking into Fry's and taking a box of discs out under your coat. (Well, theoretically, anyway.) That counts as petty theft in the state I'm in; potentially good for up to a year in jail, and several thousand dollars worth of fines.
You can't "steal" Windows 7 from a bittorrent network. You can potentially "violate copyright"--up to $150,000 worth of fines for a single event.
If it's "theft," why isn't it prosecuted as theft, in relation to the dollar value of what was "stolen?"
Quote:
If you take property that is not yours to take, that is theft.  I'm not one to quibble meanings of words.
|
If you make a copy, you haven't "taken" anything. Which is probably why copyright infringement is not prosecuted as "theft," even in those cases where it's a criminal, rather than civil, violation.
Part of the reason these discussions often break down is refusal to agree on a vocabulary. Some people want to use the word "theft" to mean "unauthorized use," possibly with the codicil, "to someone else's detriment," and others want to restrict it to the legal definition.