Copyright Infringement IS NOT THE SAME AS Theft

[cj_finn]

Andros:
Copyright infringement is not criminal. Piracy is. Section 506 is The Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act of 1982. There is a difference.
CJ

Normal infringement:
§ 501. Infringement of copyright3
(a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. For purposes of this chapter (other than section 506), any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a). As used in this subsection, the term “anyone” includes any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity. Any State, and any such instrumentality, officer, or employee, shall be subject to the provisions of this title in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity.

and

§ 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works36
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Piracy:

a) Criminal Infringement. — Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either —

(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or

(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,

shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@InvisibleWombad

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.

It’s not about the format, it’s about the current availability. I have them on tape, too, but those tapes are pretty old If Lucas was still releasing the original movies on Laserdisc, and I chose to get a bootlegged copy instead of an official one, then he loses a potential sale. Since he’s now releasing them on DVD, if I hadn’t bought one, I’d be a hypocrite. Neither of those are the case. Nor has Lucas decided that keeping Star Wars limited is part of some plan. All that happened was that there are some inefficiencies in the system; you can’t get a DVD to market overnight.

He released them a long time ago, and has already made as much off of those releases as he’s going to. Go back to my scalper analogy. Is it wrong for the scalper to not get his money? If not, then why is it wrong for me to not buy a used copy?

If you persist in saying that it’s the same as an outright theft, who has suffered a loss?

[Gary_Robson]

@iamthewalrus(:3=

It’s not about the format, it’s about the current availability. I have them on tape, too, but those tapes are pretty old

Okay, that changes things. If you have already purchased the original Star Wars videos, then it’s absolutely within your rights to copy them to a different format for your own use. Personally, I would consider your bootleg DVDs to just be a copy of your old VHS tapes made by someone else.

[Brainiac4]

@Telemark

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.

From the alt.video.tape-trading FAQ (not the most authoritative of sources…), I’m gathering that:

@alt.video.tape-trading FAQ

The U.S. Code, TITLE 17, article 506 states: “Any person who infringes a copyright willfully and for purposes of COMMERCIAL advantage or private FINANCIAL gain shall be punished as proven in section 2319 of title 18.”

I don’t have access to the statutes, but the more detailed information posted by cj finn in this thread indicates that infringement is not criminal (which is a clearer statement than my original “not illegal” wishy-washiness). My apologies for imprecise language – my intent was to draw a distinction between activities which are allowed (copying for private use) and those which are not (sale of the copies). The standard set for for piracy, which is criminal, is that commercial advantage or financial gain is involved.

[Skywatcher]

@Brainiac4

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.

IME, any act with a prominent notice proclaiming that said act is legal probably isn’t.

[Hyperelastic]

@andros

Rather, would you describe the near-century-old body of copyright statute “recent and specialized?”

The piracy bit is. Also, there are other things in the offing that would gradually criminalize simple copyright infringement and also redefine copyright infringement to prohibit activities that are now permitted. Free speech and free trade may be the building blocks of Western liberal democracy, but since certain politically influential companies feel their bottom lines are being threatened, those old notions are going the way of the dodo.

[Evil_Captor]

@Tabby_Cat

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?

Depends on how long you leave it there. Which also applies to copyright. Just how the fuck long do those corporations get to leave those Cokes in the fridge nowadays?

[Evil_Captor]

C’mon, copyright laws as they’re now constituted are just big corps getting the public gravy train headed in their direction, that’s all. I don’t understand why so many people on this board are so hyped about it: unless you’re an artist or a writer you get no benefit from them, and you don’t make huge amounts of money from them unless you win the Popular Culture Lottery.

And for the most part, if Jack copies a VHS to DVD and gives or sells it to Jill, no one’s gonna know but them, and nobody’s gonna care. If Jack opens a site on the internet to sell them, people are gonna know. People are gonna care. It’s a fairly simple and effective system for keeping poor people from making too much money and letting rich corporations make lots of money, like most laws about money.

[moriah]

As the one who started it all, I must apologize for calling the attempt to obtain a bootleg copy of a video “theft.”

It is not “theft.”

It is illegal.

What else is illegal? … um, howabout, THEFT?

So… infringement of right of ownership, infringement of right of copying… it’s still an illegal infringement of rights.

It’s illegal, and any junior lawyering to make it ‘really not illegal’ is just fucking stupid.

It wouldn’t be called ‘bootleg’ if it was legal, you jackasses.

If it’s out of print, write to the copyright owner asking for permission to copy it, just like our college professors did when they wanted us to read something out of print. If the owner of the copyright doesn’t want you copying it, then copying it, or buying a copy that was copied without permission, is illegal. Period.

Wait, did I say ‘jackass’? Yes. Good. That’s all.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@moriah

Wait, did I say ‘jackass’? Yes. Good. That’s all.

Say it again and again. Preferably when you are alone.

[Starving_Artist]

It would seem to me there are different types of “illegal.” There is civil law and there is criminal law. To say that because copyright infringement is illegal and theft is illegal they are therefore the same is really comparing apples to oranges in my opinion. Or one could just as easily say that driveway encroachment by a neighbor and rape are the same type of thing.

One is a matter of civil law and the other a matter of criminal law. They are both “illegal,” but in ways that differ vastly, both in severity of offense and in legal consequence.

[Brainiac4]

@moriah

If it’s out of print, write to the copyright owner asking for permission to copy it, just like our college professors did when they wanted us to read something out of print. If the owner of the copyright doesn’t want you copying it, then copying it, or buying a copy that was copied without permission, is illegal. Period.

AFAIK, my college profs didn’t do this. They simply copied stuff, presumably under Fair Use.

I understand getting bent out of shape about the issue – the original question was poorly worded, and **duffer **has since clarified his intent. But there clearly is a difference between purchasing a bootleg and shoplifting. Casting the one as equivalent to the other doesn’t help your case.

At some level, I think we’re on the same side – I work in retail ecommerce, so I have a personal interest in people respecting copyrights and purchasing CDs and DVDs rather than downloading them. But the level of hyperbole that the RIAA and MPAA throw around around does not help to convince people like Evil Captor that bootlegging or downloading is wrong.

[moriah]

@Ilsa_Lund

Say it again and again. Preferably when you are alone.

Ouch. That hurt!

[Evil_Captor]

@moriah

As the one who started it all, I must apologize for calling the attempt to obtain a bootleg copy of a video “theft.”

It is not “theft.”

It is illegal.

What else is illegal? … um, howabout, THEFT?

So… infringement of right of ownership, infringement of right of copying… it’s still an illegal infringement of rights.

It’s illegal, and any junior lawyering to make it ‘really not illegal’ is just fucking stupid.

It wouldn’t be called ‘bootleg’ if it was legal, you jackasses.

If it’s out of print, write to the copyright owner asking for permission to copy it, just like our college professors did when they wanted us to read something out of print. If the owner of the copyright doesn’t want you copying it, then copying it, or buying a copy that was copied without permission, is illegal. Period.

Wait, did I say ‘jackass’? Yes. Good. That’s all.

Look, you stupid fuck, just because you say it’s illegal doesn’t mean it’s right or fair or even that it makes sense. There have been laws on the books enforcing slavery, denying women the right to vote, keeping things separate but unequal, forbidding the dissmenition of information about birth control, and so forth. At one things, you could have said that doing those things was ILLEGAL and calling people jackasses for wanting to find a way around them. But you would have been actively supporting evil, you asshole.

Did I say “asshole”? Good. I meant to.

[Princhester]

@Joools

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.

Quite.

That’s kind of like saying a 19-year-old could give themselves the right to drink alcohol by drinking alcohol.

No, there’s no property rights involved here. The 19 year old is just breaking the law. They are not taking anything off anybody. They are not appropriating to themselves something that they could only lawfully get from another person who holds a property right in something.

It seems that with careful enough phrasing, plenty of types of criminal activity could be characterized as a form of “theft”: trespassing, murder, etc.

Perhaps but not validly because they don’t involve property rights.

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.

There are many (this thread has plenty) who don’t like to acknowledge that copyright infringement has an impact upon the property rights of another. They don’t like to acknowledge that by copying something they are taking away the opportunity value of a commercially valuable copyright. They like to kid themselves that the copyright holder has precisely the same thing before and after their copyright has been infringed. They hate having these things pointed out to them. They don’t like to see themselves as the equivalent as thieves. And they whinge and whine interminably at any comparison with thieves of other forms of property.

If having their behaviour and immorality compared to theft makes them squirm, so much the better.

@iamthewalrus(:3=

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.

Perhaps you will. Not everyone will. So the issue is not clear, which is what you said it was.

@Ruken

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.

Exactly. The whole problem with this “out of print” thing is that your property your own. It doesn’t become mine because you won’t sell it to me. There may be perfectly good personal or commercial reasons why I decide not to sell something. You’ve demonstrated an example of the latter. **Yosemite ** is good on explaining the former. It is not up to me to discount your reasons for not selling me what you have.

@Evil Captor

C’mon, copyright laws as they’re now constituted are just big corps getting the public gravy train headed in their direction, that’s all. I don’t understand why so many people on this board are so hyped about it: unless you’re an artist or a writer you get no benefit from them, and you don’t make huge amounts of money from them unless you win the Popular Culture Lottery.

Do you have any money in a bank? Do you or will you have a pension? Do you have insurance? If not, you’re unusual. If so, congratulations, you are an investor in big corporations, and you damn well better hope the laws of the land protect their (your) assets.

@Tabby_Cat

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.

You seem to have the priority of your formalities and your practicalities reversed.

If I were a copyright owner, I wouldn’t give a shit if you said you had an entitlement to copy my work. I wouldn’t give a damn if you called yourself Caesar and claimed to be Emporer of Antarctica.

What I would care about and what would infringe my rights and amount to appropriation of (part of) my rights would be if you copied my work.

Merely making a copy of it does not appropriate the rights, simply infringe them

How does it infringe? You are playing with words. It infringes precisely because you take something that is mine and you appropriate it to yourself. *You * exercise *my * right.

That you are not appropriating the whole of my rights does not mean you haven’t appropriated my rights.

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.

Sorry but you are not seeing the wood for the trees.

Let’s use a simplified example. Say there are only five people in the world. I have the exclusive right to copy Work A. Each of the other four people in the world just copy Work A for themselves. You say, no appropriation of my rights, no theft, because none of them claimed to be the only one able to copy.

But if one of the other four people usurped me, made four copies and distributed them, then there has been appropriation.

I can see there is a logical distinction, but there is no practical one. You’re position is good only in fairyland.

You’d outlaw murder but allow a lynching.

Theft and copyright infringement are not the same thing, legally.

As I said.

[Evil_Captor]

@Brainiac4

AFAIK, my college profs didn’t do this. They simply copied stuff, presumably under Fair Use.

I understand getting bent out of shape about the issue – the original question was poorly worded, and **duffer **has since clarified his intent. But there clearly is a difference between purchasing a bootleg and shoplifting. Casting the one as equivalent to the other doesn’t help your case.

At some level, I think we’re on the same side – I work in retail ecommerce, so I have a personal interest in people respecting copyrights and purchasing CDs and DVDs rather than downloading them. But the level of hyperbole that the RIAA and MPAA throw around around does not help to convince people like Evil Captor that bootlegging or downloading is wrong.

Actually, my interest isn’t DVD copying or bootlegging music or whatever. I’m more concerned with the way current copyright laws restrict the rights of artists to do things like sampling (in music) and collage (in art). Right now if you use an identifiable image that belongs to someone else in a collage, even if it’s just part of the collage, and the collage recontextualizes the original artwork, you can get sued. Same with music samples, I believe. It’s way too restrictive. It’s difficult to even comment on others’ artwork – I’ll bet Warhol would have a lot more trouble with those soup cans in our modern environment.

[Steve_MB]

@Princhester

There are many (this thread has plenty) who don’t like to acknowledge that copyright infringement has an impact upon the property rights of another.

Copyright is not a property right. It is a privilege granted by governments for a public policy purpose (to encourage creation of the various arts).

You won’t be able to form sound public policy without understanding this distinction, any more than you will be able to build fine carpentry if you push nails with a screwdriver and drive screws with a hammer.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@Princhester

Do you have any money in a bank? Do you or will you have a pension? Do you have insurance? If not, you’re unusual. If so, congratulations, you are an investor in big corporations, and you damn well better hope the laws of the land protect their (your) assets.

That is not a compelling argument against the claim that big corporations receive an unfair benefit from current law. It could be applied to any case in which restricting the ability of people to do something provided a monetary benefit to a corporation.

[JRDelirious]

[aside]
Y’know, some of these debates about the meaning of “theft” have led some jurisdictions (such as here where I live) to make it so the misdeameanor/felony of obtaining or procuring goods, services or a transfer of some value w/o consent and compensation of those so entitled (and/or benefitting from such obtention/procurement), is in the books as “Unlawful Appropriation” rather than using the common word “theft”.[/aside]

And sure, the “blanket” all-encompassing statement to the effect that “all unauthorized copying = theft” sounds like a bit of appeal-to-emotion hyperbole on the publishers/authors’ side. Call it “a case of one segment of the market meeting a demand not met by another” and people may start saying, hey, so let’s work around it. Call it “theft of an artist’s livelihood” and it becomes indefensible.

Now, if as a result of copyright infringement the relative market value of a legit publishing is depressed, you can argue that indeed some value has been taken from the rights-owner’s assets, his net worth diminished. But since that impacts potential earnings, it looks to me more like a tort – for damages to income potential. Still, just because the damages may not be a direct or immediate gross loss, it does not mean they are any less real.

I do tend to feel uncomfortable about the intellectual property law allowing works to essentially “lay fallow” and unavailable thru legitimate channels, but then again just the plain law of supply and demand does that for a whole bunch of goods and services – companies stop producing things that many people like and want just because it doesn’t make a profit.

[Lightnin]

Ethics, morality, and semantics aside, I think the recording companies need to rethink their strategy.

Pursuing downloaders and copiers has apparently not put a dent in file-sharing… it’s only engendered ill will towards the recording industry. You can’t litigate technology out of existence- it’ll only keep getting better and more advanced.

They need to embrace filesharing. It’s not going to go away, no matter how many people they sue.