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Originally Posted by scveteran
It may be your opinion that it is not stealing, but you are wrong according to legal books that I have checked.
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Which legal books claim that copyright infringement is theft?
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You can also go to law.com and look up theft. It says that is is the crimes where someone intentionaly take personal property without permission or consent. Has nothing to do with whether it is a physical object or not. It is still a crime.
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It can still be a crime, and not be "theft."
If someone copies an ebook, he hasn't "taken personal property." It's not gone from its original location. And he certainly hasn't "taken" it from the copyright owner, who probably didn't even have had access to the version the copy was made from.
If I scan a book and OCR it, I haven't "taken" anything from anyone. I've made something new. No "theft" is involved. If it's a book I bought, I own it... I had consent of the owner of the book.
I didn't have consent of the copyright holder. But I also didn't take anything away from him. His potential income for an ebook? It's not "theft" if I write a scathing review and convince a hundred people not to buy his book, and it's not "theft" if I give away a hundred of his books for free. In both cases, he's out 100 sales. One is legal; one is not--neither is "theft."
And if the law believed copyright infringement was theft, the penalties for copying a single ebook or other digital file would be on par with petty theft, not the insane $150k-per-infringement possibility that inspires the RIAA to file hundreds of lawsuits.