Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com) [LWN.net]

Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com)

Posted Jun 24, 2004 21:47 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (guest, #3222)
In reply to: Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com) by blayne
Parent article: Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com)

Split hairs (it's copyright infringement, not stealing.) I give you permission to have a copy of my work, at some set price. You violate that by copying it, and giving copies to your friends. How is that different from stealing? They all have copies, I don't have my earnings.

Now, I didn't say anything about people who *give permission* to copy their own works. That's different. They didn't expect to earn money from their work, maybe because it's their hobby. But that's not unlike donating property (or seeds, or cattle) without expecting any return on your donation, as opposed to selling the seeds or the cattle.

The analogy breaks down somewhat, and I truly believe artists and musicians ought to find other ways to earn money than expecting people to buy a million copies of their work, but as long as the expectation is there, and as long as the law supports that view, copying a commercial recording, and putting it up on the internet for distribution witout the creator's permission, is as close to stealing as you can get.

You can also be simplistic:

Stealing -- taking something without permission.

Until people understand that, this is going to get worse and worse.

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Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com)

Posted Jun 25, 2004 4:36 UTC (Fri) by raytd (guest, #4823) [Link]

Split hairs (it's copyright infringement, not stealing.)

No. It is NOT splitting hairs. It is a matter of law that copyright infringement is NOT theft. There are very good reasons for this.

I am a copyright holder, and there are perfectly valid reasons for you to legally copy my work and deprive me of my so called earnings (infringement), as I maintain every right to license or sell those rights. I am a property owner, but you may NOT legally deprive me of my rights to license/lease or sell that property (theft).

There is absolutely no reason to use their definition of terms for the purposes of admitting that there are people that infringe upon the rights of so called content owners. If copyright infringement was intended to mean larceny, It would have been termed that from the beginning.

Apologies if I seem harsh, but it seems you have become a victim of brain-washing.

Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com)

Posted Jun 25, 2004 6:52 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Split hairs (it's copyright infringement, not stealing.) I give you permission to have a copy of my work, at some set price. You violate that by copying it, and giving copies to your friends. How is that different from stealing? They all have copies, I don't have my earnings.

When someone steals some physical object from you, you don't have it any more. When they infringe on your copyright, you still own the copyright and can make as many copies as you please. Big difference.

Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com)

Posted Jun 25, 2004 17:42 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Well for one thing it didn't deprive anyone of their property. For another
no trespass, breaking-and-entering, robbery, etc. would be involved. What
is actually owned in your example is not the work, but the exclusive right
to copy. A right can be infringed or denied, but it can not be stolen. But
yes, I agree it's illegal and probably immoral too if you believe that
everyone should play by the same rules.

Senate bill bans P2P networks (News.com)

Posted Jun 28, 2004 12:40 UTC (Mon) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

It's not hairsplitting.

Theft and copyrigth-infringement are two different crimes, with different laws, different results, different punishments and so on.

Infact they have pretty much nothing in common whatsoever except for the fact that they are both illegal. If *that* is enough equality that you insist they should both be refered to as "stealing", then I must ask why you don't instead insist on calling it "rape" ?

Fact is, those who refer to copyrigth-infringement as "stealing" very frequently either deliberately want to confuse the issues by making people think in analogies of physical property for something that is clearly different, or they are themselves confused about what the differences are.

It doesn't get better when the same people commonly start blabbering about IP, without any distinction as to if they're talking about patents, copyrigth or trademarks, all of which are different in important ways.