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Originally Posted by cmdahler
Oh, well, if it's only been since 1976, that's completely different. I suppose a law needs to be on the books for a solid hundred years or so before it really matters, right?  |
Leaving aside the fact that most of the planet is not in the US (Mobile Read isn't), laws must stand the test of time and constitutionality in the US. I am sure you are aware of the case of Dowling v. United States (1985), because you seem so knowledgeable about copyright law, nine years after this law was passed, in which the Supreme Court had some very specific things to say about copyright, theft, and the law:
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interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: ... 'an infringer of the copyright.' ...
The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over the copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use. While one may colloquially link infringement with some general notion of wrongful appropriation, infringement plainly implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
—Dowling v. United States , 473 U.S. 207, pp. 217–218
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I hope, since you are so obsessed with US law, that you will make an effort to understand what they were trying to say the next time you are tempted to call copying theft. I am sure you will realize the error of your ways.