Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
I think that it would be a very bad thing if every teenager with an mp3 on their ipod that they hadn't paid for were prosecuted for theft and branded criminals. It is not the appropriate crime, in my view. You would be labelling as thieves much of the population.
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They are thieves. We're moving to an age of digital products replacing physical products. In 50 years you probably won't find music, movies etc. for sell in major stores--just in vintage shops like you do records today.
Thus for many products the type of theft will change, as it's not longer possible to shoplift them and still a physical product. The way to steal is to go online and download it without paying for it.
I don't see the crime being easier to commit making it a lesser crime etc. Maybe the penalties, labels applied to offenders need to be less severe since it is and will be more prevalent due to the ease of committing the offense, and the unfortunate lack of stigma with downloading an album vs. shoplifting the cd version of the album.
But it's still theft. And in any case as a whole society needs to move away from this "get tough on crime" non-sense and focus more on prevention and rehabilitating offenders and not just handing out punishments and labeling law breakers as bad people. Especially for minor crimes like theft--be it shoplifting or stealing a digital file.
But that doesn't mean stealing digital content isn't theft. And it doesn't meant it's illegal copying, especially when you weren't making a copy but downloading something you don't own to begin with.