literary property
n. the writings of an author which entitles him/her to the use of the work, including publication, and sale or license for a profit to others who will then have the right to publish it. Literary property includes books, articles, poetry, movie scripts, computer programs and any writing which lends itself to publication or use. A close question can arise when a professional writer sends letters to others: are they literary property? Probably not if they were intended to be just personal communications. J. D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, thought otherwise and sued to prevent use of his letters sent to another writer. The case was compromised and settled. To protect any literary work and profits from it, the writer should mark it as copyrighted*
I was perfectly aware of the limitations of my analogy, but it seemed like a simple enough point that I didn’t particularly need a better one. And in fact, you seem to have gotten the point, so I was right.
Also, let’s get away from this whole “moral equivalency” thing. I never said copying a movie is the moral equivalent of robbing a bank. It isn’t. It isn’t even the moral equivalent of shoplifting a CD. Neither is giving a cutomer a quarter in change from the till, when he’s only owed 24 cents. It is still stealing, however–just a very petty example of it.
And regardless of what the OED reports, I mainain that anyone with a basic understanding of English will recognize that in common usage, stealing includes activities in which no one is deprived of anything. What if you were on vacation when I “borrowed” your car? What if I broke into a locked storage facility at night (when you wouldn’t have access to it anyway) and played all your old video games, then returned them and replaced the lock before morning?
None of these analogies are perfect. In almost any case where you are using a physical object, there is some chance of breakage, or of the rightful owner needing the item during the time you’re using it. But I don’t think that’s what defines as stealing.
Anyway, it’s a stupid argument. I agree that personal-use copyright violations are relatively petty examples of theft, and I’ve committed such violations myself without feeling much guilt. But I won’t try to weasle around what I’ve done by playing sematic games. What it is called says next to nothing about how moral it is. It just says that “steal” is a more flexible term than the OED gives it credit for.
Again which totally irrelevant to the OP. Whether or not some intangible right is encrouched upon by the act of copying the CD… NOTHING IS TAKEN. So it is not theft.
The terms theft and stealing have broader meanings than just carrying something away, leaving the owner without it.
If something belongs to someone, appropriating it without permission is stealing it. In the case of a discrete item, appropriating it does deprive the owner of its future use of course, but it is possible to steal intangible things such as ideas, services and privileges; appropriating them unlawfully(stealing them) without depriving the owner of them, because they aren’t things you can pick up and carry off.
I think there’s a logical fallacy abroad in this thread to wit:
-Stealing a tangible object deprives the owner of it
-Therefore any act that does not deprive the owner of property is not stealing.
That’s a bit like:
-‘Sport’ includes the game of football
-Therefore anything that is not football is not sport.
Of course copyright violation is not the same in every way as theft of a tangible item, but so what? stealing an apple or a postage stamp is not the same in every way as stealing a million dollars or a pet dog.
This thread is a perfect example of why arguing from a dictionary definition is futile. Dictionaries are not the source of meaning in language. They are a chronicle of how the words are used in everyday speech. Common usage of the term theft plainly includes the concept of copyright infringement. As a cite, I can point you to any number of legal judgements and articles in the mainstream media. That this usage is not reflected in (some) dictionaries is only evidence that dictionaries by nature lag behind common usage. I suspect that any dictionaries whose definition of theft or stealing are not currently broad enough to encompass intellectual property will rectify that oversight in the next edition.
But something is taken, clearly. If I go to an illegal download site, and download a bunch of MP3s, I’ve clearly taken the MP3s. I did not have them before I went to the site, I do have them after I leave it. I must have taken something for them to be in my possesion. The fact that there’s still an identical copy left behind is irrelevant. I have taken something which I had no legal right to take. Therefore, it is theft.
By this logic, we shouldn’t call shoplifting “theft,” because shoplifting isn’t nearly as nasty as burglary and bank robbery.
I find it ironic that you object to “theft” because of the associated negative imagery of the word, but not to “piracy,” which has imagery that is both far more negative, and which is much less semanticly appropriate for the situation being described.
I’ve participated on the fringes of this debate a few times and I don’t really think it’s worth spending much time on: definitional arguments are pretty tedious.
Whether copyright infringement is theft depends on the definition of theft. An obvious statement but it is amazing how many of the debates on this subject proceed without any consensus on this vital point.
In all jurisdictions of which I am aware the strict legal definition of theft simply does not encompass the infringement of intangible property rights, and if that is how one is going to look at the question, copyright is not theft. Period.
If one is going to use a more vernacular definition of theft, then as Mangetout says, it could well encompass copyright infringement. For example, I’ve seen a definition that describes theft as appropriating another’s property. “Property” could encompass intellectual property. If your entitlement as a copyright owner is the exclusive right to copy something and I make copies of that thing, it is at the very worst a small stretch of the language (and arguably no stretch at all) to say that I have (at least partially) “appropriated” your entitlement.
I know from debating the point in the past that there will be those who doubt the proposition that an exclusive right to copy has been partially appropriated by an infringing act of copying. They may say “but afterward, the copyright owner still has an exclusive right to copy, and the infringer still does not”, and I agree that in a fairly meaningless impractical sense that may be true. However, in practical terms what the copyright owner had before is not quite what they have afterward, and what the infringer does is precisely what the owner had an exclusive property right to do.
But overall, once one gets into the vernacular, one is on shifting sand so I see little point in debating it in any detail, but I think it’s fair to say that is far from unarguable that copyright infringement is theft once one admits a vernacular definition of “theft”.
Nice attempt at distorting my argument. I didn’t say that words have no meaning, I said that the dictionary is not the source of that meaning. The meaning of any term is determined by how people use it in the real world. When a usage becomes widespread enough, it gets recorded in the dictionary. When common usage and the dictionary clash, common usage always trumps the dictionary. Does anyone really want to argue that the common usage of “theft” now includes the concept of intellectual property violations? No? Then pointing to the dictionary is useless. It’s like correcting how someone is using Windows XP by showing them the manual from Windows '95. The fact that some dictionaries define theft too narrowly to include IP violations doesn’t mean that people are using the word theft incorrectly, it just means your dictionary is out of date.
Of course it means they are using it incorrectly. Just because this incorrect usage might become accepted in the future doesn’t change the fact that it is incorrect right now.
Just because it’s not theft of physical property doesn’t mean it’s not theft of intellectual property. To say that it’s not theft because it’s not physical property is like saying theft of services isn’t theft. Theft of intellectual property is a particular type of theft just as theft of services is.
It’s not my point of view, it’s the facts. Intellectual property theft refers to the stealing of designs, technology, etc. Piracy is making copies of something in violation of a copyright.