Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
No, it is copyright infringement.
For example, if someone used a picture of a donkey which Disney owns the copyright to as their avatar, that's copyright infringement - it doesn't make them a thief.
Does it?
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That's a different situation.
Some one buys a book to own it and read it. Some downloads an illegal copy of a book to own it and read it. A thief steals a copy of the physical book to own it and read it.
So getting an illegal copy is pretty much theft to me. Something like say, using an image of a bookcover as an avatar is copyright infringement. It's using a companies copyrighted material without permission. But it didn't involve acquiring their full content and consuming it without paying for it.
The company didn't lose a potential sale from someone using the book cover as an avatar, and the person didn't get the experience of reading the book without paying for it. A person downloads the book from a torrent site and reads it, the company lost a potential sale and the person got to enjoy the experience of reading it without paying for it.
I don't get why people think that stealing a book, movie, album etc. electronically is really any different than stealing a physical book, DVD or CD. It's still a lost sale for the company, and you still got to experience the content without paying for it.
Getting an illegal digital copy should be a crime and punished similarly to stealing the physical copy. Distributing files illegally should be treated similarly to one that makes physical bootlegs for sale--more leniently probably since they are giving them away rather than selling them.