While I think there is some validity to this point of view, I’m not sure that it is entirely true. Certainly the fact that electronic copies can be made of electronic media without loss of quality is cause for concern for holders of copyright in a way that older forms of reproduction were not. However, if you look at history, Mark Twain was VERY unhappy with copyright law in his day. Some of his complaints have been fixed, but I’m not sure that the underlying issue has changed. (In Twain’s early days countries generally did not recognize each other’s copyright. So a British printer could legally print Twain’s work cheaply without paying him royalties. Meanwhile, American printers might well be more inclined to print the work Charles Dickens because not having to pay him royalties made his workds cheaper and therefore more desirable to the reader. Also, copyright did not last as long in those days.) Personally, I think that copyright goes too long these days (works should eventually become public domain and it is not clear that things written after 1923 ever will) but my basic sympathies go with the creators not the “but everyone’s doing it and it is my right to have a copy of anything i want to have a copy of” people.
Actually, if you read the last paragraph of my OP, you’ll see where I did exactly that. Like many fans who distribute out of print TV shows, I will reevaluate things if an official version is released. If it’s something worth having, buy the real copy. If not, trash it.
The harm does not come in getting the bootleg originally, but in not replacing it when the work is re-released.
Say you’re an artist who paints pictures. You paint a picture. It’s really cool. Everyone else thinks it’s really cool too. There is only one original painting, of course, but you decide to release limited edition high-quality prints of your painting. You only want 500 copies made. You will sell a few now, and say you will sell some later…maybe. People are willing to pay a lot of money for these prints since the painting is so cool and this is the only way to have a legal copy of it.
After selling 100 prints, you decide you aren’t going to sell any more.
The prints aren’t available, and people can now only buy “used” copies for very high prices, OR they can make bootleg copies of the prints. While you say you aren’t going to sell the remaining 400 prints, you could do it. The presence of easily available bootleg will depress the price. While you are not necessarily being deprived of income, you are being deprived of potential income that would be available if you ever did decide to sell more prints.
I’m not sure if this is any different from what people have been discussing already. I don’t yet have a complete opinion on the subject, so I shall continue to think.
I think it has to do with the shift to information/intellectual property being America’s biggest export. Lots of money being tossed around to make this a social issue & the RIAA is only the biggest mouth not the biggest player. I have a feeling Microsoft speaks softer and carries a bigger stick in these matters. 
Where did this “faceless corporation” crap come from? The copyright to my latest book is owned by a publishing company. It’s a corporation. It is owned and operated by real, live people who depend on that corporation for their income. They aren’t faceless, and they could definitely care a lot less about the merit of what they publish (but I assume you meant to say “couldn’t care less”).
Taking a small company like this and referring to it as a “faceless corporation” is a cheap justification for stealing from them. And when you steal from them, I don’t get my royalty checks, so you’re stealing from me, too.
So if it takes you six years to save up enough money for a second printing of your self-published memoir, it’s okay for me to fire up the Xerox and start making money off of your work? If you own the right to something, then you own the right to sell it and the right to not sell it.
Since when is a work of art just “information”? When you listen to the latest song by your favorite band, is it because it’s “information” that should be free? What a copout!
The “information” contained in my books is free. Go ahead. Read the books, learn what’s in there, and it’s your information. Shout it to the world, teach it to others. Good on you! But the words that convey that information are mine. I spent many months writing that book, and I deserve to get paid for it just as much as you deserve to get paid for whatever you do for a living. When you “liberate information,” you’re liberating somebody’s paycheck, and that’s wrong.
Oh, and to get back to the OP:
I own the originals on VHS. If I understand you correctly, it’s fine to make illegal copies as long as they’re on a format the copyright owner didn’t produce? If my book is only available in print form, then it’s fine for you to bootleg an ebook? If I put out a CD, and you don’t have a CD player, then it’s fine for you to bootleg a cassette?
Hogwash. The format has nothing to do with theft of intellectual property.
Acutally, doesn’t Best Brains allow the tapes to be distributed as long as there isn’t a copy available from Rhino?
Don’t know if English is your first language but “could care less” is a common idiom to mean couldn’t care less. SDMB GQ thread
Sure. But “common” doesn’t mean “right,” and as written it makes no sense.
By this definition, the first human to set foot on any piece of land and settle down there would be a thief. Try again.
You have it bass ackwards. The law gives you the privilege of limiting the uses others may make of your copyrighted works. The “fair use” doctrine is one of the limits beyond which that privilege does not extend.
This is distinguished from physical property rights, which are fine-tuned by the law but not created by law (i.e. the concept of “my house”, “my socks”, etc would have meaning even in a state of anarchy, but the concept of “my copyrights” or “my patents” would not).
Oh, you had to go and open that can of worms. Any guesses how long before this gets derailed into a rant on the Pilgrims?
I’m sorry, I thought it was clear from the rest of my post that I was referring to something that actively belonged to someone else.
Nuh uh. Appropriation of the right of reproduction would occur when I maintain that I have the right to reproduce the work, or to licence others to reproduce the work. It would be like claiming that I have the right to distribute Star Wars in North America, not LucasArts.
Merely making a copy of it does not appropriate the rights, simply infringe them. I do not claim that I have the exclusive right to reproduce or licence others to reproduce, when I make a bootleg copy of Star Wars.
It should also be noted that the only right copyright gives you is the exclusive right to reproduce. The only way to appropriate that right would be to claim that YOU, in fact, had the right to exclusivly reproduce the work, or licence it, and tell LucasArts to desist in the infringement of YOUR copyright. Or tell LucasArts that they in fact have been distributing Star Wars under licence from you.
Cojones the size of prize winning pumpkins, I should think.
Theft and copyright infringement are not the same thing, legally.
You mean if I leave a can of coke in my fridge (not actively using it), and someone else comes along and takes it, it’s not theft?
Legally, copying any copyrihted information without permission is prohibited. And, as some have pointed out, can also be criminal if you are “pirating” the works (essentially mass copying with knowledge of the copyright for the purpose of making money). The moral aspects of copyright infringement are not so clear however.
To the extent that one believes that breaking any law is immoral, infringement is immoral. But when copyrights are used to attempt gain exclusive rights to ideas, as opposed to the expression of ideas, then we are getting into the area where infringement is more permissible. I’m speaking here of some of the misuses to which some of the printer companies have put the DCMA. Still, copying without permission is wrong in the general sense.
I would very much like to see a reduction in the length of copyrights, a compulsory royalty system whereby copies can be made so long as a royalty is paid (no permission of copyright holder needed), and a ‘working’ requirement imposed that allows works that are out of print for a period of time (whatever that might be) to become public domain. So in my world, you’d get something like 50-75 years total to enjoy your copyrights. You would also have to keep the work in print or otherwise available (this could easily be accomplished on the internet) or risk having the copyright lapse after a period of something like 5-10 years. Finally, if the work was out of print or otherwise unavailable, the public would still have access to the works under a mandatory royalty system. What exactly the royalty might be would be hard to determine. However, the mandatory royalty might be tied directly to a chart relating the type of work with a graduated filing fee schedule. An arbitrary example might go something like this:
Work/Fee $50 $100 $150
Painting $2/ea $3/ea 4/ea
Music .5/ea $.75/ea $1/ea
Books $1.75 $2.5 $3.0
These mandatory fees probably should count as ‘working’ for the purposes of determining whether the work is still in use/available.
For those whose works are initially valued too low, a provision that would allow for increasing the mandatory fees would be in place, with the copyright holder having to pay to get the mandatory fees increased.
This is a rough idea, but it might solve a few of the problems we are seeing now. Specifically, access could be had to all works and the owner of the copyright would get to set the fees. Penalties for infringement could be increased (though given the fact that there are already statutory damages available this doesn’t actually need to happen) or made easier to enforce (think speeding ticket rather than felony). And we would also clear out a ton of deadwood from the copyright rolls, i.e. works that have lain fallow for too long.
cj
This is the rare Pit post that should have been in GQ, because it has a factual answer. Copyright infringement is not theft. It is not even a crime (excepting a few recent, specialized statutes). Otherwise, people who infringe copyright would be arrested and charged with larceny. Of course, there are a number of vested interests who would like to see it treated as theft, but at least for now, copyright infringement is not theft.
No, copyright infringement is a federal felony per 17 U.S.C. § 506 and 18 U.S.C. § 2319.
Andros:
Go back and read those statutes again. They only apply in certain circumstances. Run of the mill copyright violations are not criminal.
cj
You’d describe them as “recent and specialized?”
Rather, would you describe the near-century-old body of copyright statute “recent and specialized?”