I’m listening to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Roger Waters does not own this recording. He couldn’t come to my house and demand it back. He (or his label and bandmates, etc.) hold the sole right to designate when and where copies of it are made and sold (and the agents who perform the action). To make an illegal copy is to infringe his rights to control the production of copies, not to “steal” his intellectual property.
I’m here. My energy level is rather low right now too. We’ll see how it goes, shall we? 
Just let it slide, man.
Yeah, I know you aren’t a man. But you know what I mean. 
To continue that line of reasoning: The argument that is usually made is that by copying the song you have deprived the copyright owner of a potential sale. While this may or may not be the case in all instances, it’s clearly not in the case of something that’s out of print and no longer being sold at all.
Yeah, there are moral questions to be dealt with here. Or we could ignore them and spout nonsense about how buying a bootleg out-of-print video is the moral equivalent of breaking someone’s window in and pilfering their belongings or taking someone’s car.
Huh. I inspire a pit thread and it ends up defending me. :smack: I’m never gonna get this fucking thing right, am I?
Anyway, just to clarify a couple of things. In my OP I mentioned “bootlegs and imports” because I had just closed a window to a site that had a guy mention this as one of the few ways to get this movie at a reasonable price. What I was looking for were sites that may offer imports.
Now, this was a made-for-tv movie shown on A&E years ago. My mom had taped it when the second showing aired, but that tape is long gone. It’s kinda like taping *Miracle on 34th St * or It’s a Wonderful Life. Somebody owns the rights to it, but nothing prevents you from recording it to watch again and again. (At least not yet.) Not a good analogy in itself, but it sets this up.
Since the owner is the BBC (I believe) we can skip past the legal cites in the US concerning buying it from company in the UK. I can’t see anything wrong in buying a copy from a store in London, as long as it’s a legal copy.
In the link I had in my OP I listed the only 3 copies Amazon had to offer. They were touted as being factory sealed, but that just means the owners haven’t opened them yet. They’re not direct selling by the studio. It’s simple supply and demand. They ranged from $130 to $377. It lists at $29.99. Limited copies + poularity = higher prices.
However Moderate demand + Extraordinary prices = shopping around.
Think of it this way. Remember Cabbage Patch Dolls? Remember the year people were literally killing each other to get the few delivered each week? A lot of people made some coin by snatching them up and selling them for upwards of 2000% profit. Now what the hell would have been wrong with buying the same licensed product from a company in England or Australia? The company still makes their profit, and the consumer doesn’t get raped.
I had no intention of cheating anyone, nor did I have any intention of trying to find the best deal. In the other thread I mentioned I found a copy on e-bay for $15 + $3 shipping. Bootleg? I really don’t care, I’m paying in good faith. Maybe the guy hates horror flicks or he’s trying to piss off an ex. Maybe he’s trying to make a quick buck. Either way I couldn’t care less as long as the quality is good and I save myself over a hundred bucks.
That’s supposed to read: nor did I have any intention of NOT trying to find the best deal.
Copyright laws are out of control. Most artistic works are no longer controlled by the person who created them, but by faceless corporations who could care less about their merit. Anything that’s out of print for more than five years should enter the public domain by default. Ain’t gonna happen, but one can always hope.
And it’s patently ridiculous to claim that downloading a movie or mp3 is the same as stealing a Mercedes Benz off the lot. Any time somebody here makes that analogy, it makes me wonder what their real agenda is.
Whenever I download something, I don’t think of it as theft…I think of it as “liberation.”
INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!
Clearly not? What if it comes back into print? Will you still buy even though you already have a bootlegged copy? I don’t think this is clear at all.
Of course, information being merely an abstraction, it doesn’t have any wants at all. What you really mean is:
I WANT INFORMATION TO BE FREE!
But that sounds kinda whiny and Veruca Salt-ish, so I don’t suppose I’ll be hearing you shouting that quite so loud any time soon.
I am constantly amazed at all the consternation and worry and fear over the issue of copyrights. When did this issue become such a huge matter in everyone’s minds? I mean, copyrights are all well and good, but I swear, I wish everyone was as concerned with obeying traffic laws as they are about upholding copyrights.
I’m more than happy with the clause in standard contracts which mean the rights revert to the author two years after the book is OOP. Beats me why my books should suddenly become public domain so that people can get it for free.
Copyright: A right, against the world, to reproduce the work (or expression of an idea), or to licence someone else to reproduce the work.
Theft: Dishonestly appropriating property (rights of ownership) belonging to another with intention to permananetly deprive the other of it.
Rights of ownership: A bundle of rights associated with ownership, Includes rights such as right to set the price for sale, right to use, right as to it’s fruits (think tree and apple), etc etc
Therefore, infringement of copyright <> theft, because there is no deprivation; although the right to reproduce has been infringed, it has not been appropriated (the bootlegger has not interfered with the ability of the copyright holder to either reproduce the work, or licence others to reproduce it).
Contrast with stealing a car, you dishonestly (objective standard, jury decision) appropriate the right of use (you prevent the owner from enjoying the car, and exercise the right as if it were your own), belonging to another (the right of enjoyment belongs to me), with an intention to permanently deprive me of it (you aint giving it back)
Disclaimer: All based on UK law. US law may be different. IANALyet.
Go argue morals til your hair falls out.
I do think that intellectual property theft is still theft.
That said, I feel very little guilt when I get an illegal copy of something that isn’t available commercially. I’d buy it from the copyright owner if I could, but if I can’t, I don’t see why that means I can’t ever have it.
For me, it’s comparable to stealing stuff out of the neighbor’s trash on Large Trash Day. Sure, it’s technically stealing, but who cares? Not nobody, that’s who.
For future possible Region-variances, you might try this software:
http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm
A friend of mine just moved to London for school, she’s only found Region 2 discs available in her area, and needed a way to be able to play them on her Region 1 DVD player on her laptop, as well as play the Region One discs she brought with her ( all legimate, non-pirated, non-bootleg and for-real-paid-for-like, I might add).
She says the software works great thus far, and she can watch whatever Region movie she wants, whenever. (Windows does allow you to change DVD player regions, but only like, twice in XP back and forth, for a total of four allowable Region switches. If you try and switch the Region player after your alloted amount of times, if won’t work, it locks into whatever Region your last alloted switch was designated as.)
ARGH! I meant to post this in the GQ thread, and I’m a dumb ass…a really exhausted dumb-ass. Sorry.
The “against the world” bit means the *exclusive * right. Pay attention to that point, it is important.
[My emphasis]
The italicized bit is where you go wrong. The bolded bit is where you go oxymoronic.
The deprivation is of the value of the right. The right to reproduce has been (partially) appropriated to the infringer when the infringer reproduces (an act exclusively the property of the copyrightholder).
The very thing copyright gives you is an exclusive right to reproduce. To suggest that if others reproduce, there has been no appropriation of the right to reproduce is oxymoronic. If it were correct, it would make the idea of an exclusive right to reproduce meaningless. “I am the only person who can copy this book. Anyone else can copy it without depriving me of that privilege, because even though they can copy the book, I’m the only one who can copy the book”.
I should add that I am well aware that copyright infringement is not theft, in terms of the actual definition of the word. However, in practical terms they amount to about the same.
Copyright increases the commercial value of knowledge and art and other stuff. It means that the creation of art and knowledge is something that people can do to earn a living, which means more gets created. I see that as a good thing. YMMV.
The copyright issue is getting bigger the easier it gets to copy and to distribute copies. There is an explosion in the latter, so there is increased interest in the former.
But that this were so.
On the legality of it:
I have seen, at SF & other conventions, individual copies of television programs and movies for sale on videotape, with a prominently displayed notice indicating that this is a legal practice. I am most definitely not a lawyer, but this seems to be based on the Sony/Betamax decision which made home taping legal.
It is definitely legal for me to record something off the air for my own use – my Tivo does that constantly, for example. If I put it on some kind of transferable medium, and give it to another person, it’s still legal – no commercial intent exists. However, if I begin to make multiple copies of it for sale, then I have a commercial intent, and it’s not legal.
If I harm the copyright owner’s ability to make money by (effectively) placing it in the public domain (e.g., putting MP3 versions of a song into a filesharing service), then it is most definitely illegal.
Back on the main topic:
Is copyright infringement the same as theft? I think they’re not the same, but they are comparable (and that yes, they do both have degrees).
And did anyone else notice that CD sales are on the rebound? Guess it might have been the quality of the music being produced (rather than illegal filesharing) that was depressing the market.
I don’t think you are correct. You have the right to time shift for your own use. Giving it to someone else, regardless of commercial intent, I believe is against the law. You are unlikely to be prosecuted, but it’s not legal. Commercial sale is not needed to be against the law, it’s the copying and distributing that is the problem.
This premise seems like a stretch. You seem to be saying that if you do something you don’t have the legal right to, you’re temporarily granting yourself that right. Thus stealing the exclusivity of that right from its true holder.
That’s kind of like saying a 19-year-old could give themselves the right to drink alcohol by drinking alcohol.
It seems that with careful enough phrasing, plenty of types of criminal activity could be characterized as a form of “theft”: trespassing, murder, etc. But that’s not a useful way to describe them. In the case of copyright, where a precise and descriptive term already exists (“infringement”), talking about “theft” just seems like an attempt to apply a less-descriptive word that has more emotional resonance.