Interesting.
That reminds me of a story: so there I was at the flea market, trying to sell this dirty old blanket I found in my attic, but no one would buy it. I thought they were just uninterested customers, but now you’ve opened my eyes. They were THIEVES! They took the money that I would have had. I WOULD have gotten some money for it, but I didn’t.
Nice try, dude. But I think others can read. I’m sure you can too.
Just wondering: do you also have a problem with the terminology “stealing cable”? It seems to me that getting cable without paying for it and downloading songs from the internet have a lot of similarities. For instance:
So is “stealing cable” significantly different in your mind from pirating software/music? What about sneaking into the movie theater? They were going to be screening that movie anyway, and if the theater isn’t full you’re not even denying anyone the chance to see it.
In principle, yes, but it hardly ever comes up and I don’t think that act is moral anyway, so I don’t put up a fight. But I’ll note here that there is only so much signal to go around; every time you split the line, you attenuate the signal, so whoever’s on the other end of that split is losing what you gain.
Well, I think the fact that physical property is involved is an important difference. If you break into the cable company’s box and splice in your own wires, you’re violating their property and possibly degrading service for other customers. (Satellite TV, on the other hand, comes into your home whether you want it or not, and you aren’t depriving anyone by decrypting and watching it, so I think “stealing” satellite TV is comparable to making unauthorized copies in that sense.)
If you sneak into the theater without paying, you’re trespassing on the theater owner’s land, depriving him of various potential uses of it. Perhaps he wanted to take all the empty seats out for cleaning, or invite a group of hungry orphans in to watch a free movie. Maybe he just likes gazing at the beauty of an empty seat. Whether he wanted to do those things or not, he can’t do them if you’re taking up his space - you’re making the choice for him.
OTOH, if you were some kind of ghost, and you could sneak into the theater without taking up any space, making any noise, leaving any mess, putting even the smallest extra load on the HVAC system with your body heat, etc. then I don’t think I could object.
I wasn’t talking about empty theaters, but rather a screening which is only half-full. The theater owner isn’t going to be ripping out any seats for cleaning or inviting hungry orphans to fill his extra seats, because there are a bunch of other people in there watching the movie along with you. Those other people have no idea whether you paid or not, and they didn’t pay for the movie with the expectation that one more seat would not be sold.
As for the air conditioning situation, I would wager that one more warm body in the room won’t make any difference in the bottom line. If, on the other hand, some sort of movement got started and fifty people a day were walking into theaters, sitting through the matinee without paying, and walking out then I think that there would be an effect. (Sort of like how if everybody downloaded their music instead of buying it, people would notice.) Sure, you’re trespassing (in the common parlance if not in law) when you theater hop, because you don’t have a ticket for that show, but you are also stealing a viewing of the movie and depriving both the theater owner and the distributing company of their shares of your admission fee.
But, this thread is not actually about whether doing any of these things is wrong, but rather whether it should be called stealing. So it doesn’t really matter if you think getting cable for free is moral or not.
You’re only “depriving” them of that fee in exactly the same sense that I deprived the producers of Baby Geniuses 2 of my admission fee when I decided not to see such a crappy movie. Whether you stay at home or sneak into the theater without paying, they’re not getting your money; and if it doesn’t cost them any money for you to see it, you’re not taking any money from them by doing so. You are, however, depriving the theater owner of his ability to decide how his property shall be used.
Indeed. I only brought that up to explain my lack of outrage at the term. Calling copyright infringement “stealing” bothers me because it demonizes people who I don’t believe are doing anything wrong, by equating their actions to actions we can all agree are wrong; I don’t really care about demonizing people who get cable without paying for it, even if the term is still inaccurate.
So it’s only theft if you actually lose something. So if I take your car, and you have good insurance, I haven’t stolen from you because your insurance will give you a new car. Now we both have new cars and everybody but the insurance company is happy. If you want to get down to it, I’ve stolen from AllState, but I haven’t stolen anything from you. Right.
In a related matter, you seem to want to argue semantics about whether copyright infringement is theft based upon the notion that if the law doesn’t call it theft, it manifestly is not. From this we deduce that killing is legal because noone has ever been convicted of killing. Rather they go to jail for murder or manslaughter but not for killing. Lovely. In the same way that manslaughter is a type of killing, copyright infringement is a type of theft.
Now, with regard to the movie example. Baby Geniuses II is a terrible movie, I’m sure. And nobody should have to pay money to see it. You weren’t going to go and see it, because you have taste. You could probably do a pretty good business having people pay you not to go see it. So you think it’s fine to sneak into the theater to see this POS flick. What about a good movie? It’s not ok to sneak into a movie you want to see, because you wouldn’t have paid anyhow, but those crass immoral folks who sneak into all the shows (good and bad) aren’t doing anything wrong because they wouldn’t pay anyhow? This doesn’t make any sense to me.
Here’s another example: museums. Some museums have a “recommended” entrance fee. They have a sign up that says “We suggest you pay this much” or what have you. That’s great. The museum is acknowledging that some people value their stuff more than others. But at the Louvre there is a fixed rate. Now suppose that you don’t want to pay 8 Euros just to see the Mona Lisa. It’s only worth 2 Euros to you. Is it acceptable to sneak past the museum guards and leave a 2 Euro coin at the ticketing booth because that’s all you wanted to pay? Bear in mind that there are thousands of people who go through the gates every day, so one more doesn’t make any difference. It looks to me like a type of stealing. You’ve deprived the museum of 6 Euros for your admission, and seen the show anyway. Your argument seems to be “Well, I wasn’t going to pay 8 Euros, so they should be happy they got 2.” It sounds like a rationalization to me.
sinjin
Nope. They won’t give me the same car, they’ll give me a check which may or may not be enough to get a suitable replacement. It’ll be a hassle buying a new one, and in the meantime I’ll have no transportation. I get to decide whether I prefer the car or the money; you don’t get to make that decision for me.
If you can take my car while leaving an exact duplicate in its place, so that I can’t tell the difference and my use of the car isn’t impacted at all, then you haven’t stolen anything from me.
Uh huh. Do you realize that your logic applies equally well to claims such as “jaywalking is a type of rape” and “vanilla is a type of chocolate”? If you ignore the need for evidence, you have no way to know which claims are true and which are false.
In other words, your argument seems to boil down to “the law can’t contain every possible synonym, so any crime might very well be a type of any other crime”. If that’s the case, then there’s no point in talking about some crimes being subsets of other crimes at all, is there? Certainly no point in making bold claims like “Arguing any other position can be a political statement or ignorance or simple self-interest, but it is not current law.”
No, I think you’re missing the point. My point was that what deprives the theater owner, movie studio, etc. of (potential) money is the choice not to buy a ticket. The reason for that choice is irrelevant: the studio “loses” exactly as much money to a guy who sneaks into a theater without paying as they “lose” to a guy who never sees the movie at all.
If someone who would be willing to pay to see the movie ends up watching it for free instead, the studio still hasn’t lost anything, because his viewing doesn’t incur any additional costs for them; they’ve simply not gained anything, which is fine, because they were never entitled to his money in the first place unless he promised to pay them. He hasn’t harmed them any more than someone else who just doesn’t want to see the movie, which (last I checked) is still allowed.
Of course not. As I’ve said, they have the right to decide who can be on their property, and that includes setting conditions for entry. The scarce and exclusive nature of physical property is what gives them that right.
Looks more like trespassing to me.
If you would like to continue this discussion on this website, you will choose to refrain from making personal insults in this Forum.
[ /Moderating ]
I didn’t mean to offend with that remark, and I apologize if Exapno found it offensive. I will continue to refrain from making personal insults. I just took his insubstantial post as a sign that he was tired of this thread, and wondered why he was sticking around making insubstantial posts if he was tired of it.
Mr2001, will you please explain to me how “murder and manslaughter are legal classifications of killing” leads to “jaywalking is a type of rape”? I am not saying “the law can’t contain every possible synonym, so any crime might very well be a type of any other crime” as you have represented my argument. I would rephrase my argument as “the law has different names for related crimes which do not necessarily correspond to their common names.” For example, if person A kills person B, they will not be charged with the crime of killing. Depending on the circumstances they will be charged with murder or manslaughter or possibly nothing at all.
You have been arguing on the premise that if you take something which does not have a physical substance, it is not stealing because you have not been deprived of a physical thing. That is, it’s not theft if you don’t abscond with some physical thing. I can steal your television, but I cannot steal your ideas. Unfortunately, “to steal” as an English verb has been applied to both material and immaterial cases since there was an English language. I can post examples going back to the thirteenth century if you want, but it seems a little tedious.
Let me remind you which claims I’m responding to:
When you’re specifically referring to the law, you can’t just play fast and loose with casual definitions.
For example, “killing” can mean a few things besides extinguishing the life of a living being. When you turn off an engine, you “kill” it. When you’re playing Counter-Strike and you shoot another player’s character with a virtual bullet, you “kill” the player. When you’re performing before an audience and they absolutely love you, you’re “killing 'em”. When you’re negotiating with someone and he’s pressing a hard bargain, you might say “You’re killin’ me here!”
Those are all definitions of “killing”, and in the right circumstances, you can use them without confusion. But those are not the kinds of “killing” to which the laws against killing apply. If you called someone a killer because he turned off your engine or made you pay a few percent more than you wanted, that’d be somewhere between ambiguous and misleading. If you called him a murderer that’d be misleading unless you made it clear that you were speaking in metaphor. And you’d simply be lying if you said “Tough negotiation is a subset of murder, and anyone who denies that is ignorant of the law.” Even if it were illegal, it still wouldn’t be murder.
That’s exactly what’s going on here. “Stealing” typically refers to taking property away from its owner, but some people also use it to refer to unauthorized copying. That secondary definition, however, has nothing to do with the crime of theft. You might as well claim that stealing third base or stealing a kiss are subsets of theft; that might work if you’re trying to solve a riddle, but it’s not true in any legal sense.
First, the quotes you served up were from Exapno Mapcase, and not me.
Second, you say
To this I reply: “stealing” has always also referred to unauthorized copying.
There are earlier, similar, uses, but they’re not really in English anymore because they’re too old. The point is, “stealing” does not typically refer to taking property away from its owner. It has a wider meaning and has had a wider meaning for centuries.
Finally, there is a real and substantive difference between “murder and manslaughter are types of killing” and “Tough negotiation is a subset of murder” or any of your other examples. I would appreciate it if you could offer an other reply to my post #71 which actually addresses my questions.
Correct. He and JThunder were arguing the legal point, which is what I’ve been responding to. If you’re arguing something else, then I apologize for the confusion.
I don’t doubt that the word was used that way, but what is this quote from?
Typically, I believe it does refer to taking property away from its owner. If a friend or relative left a message on your answering machine, saying “Something of mine was stolen today!” with no further explanation, which definition would you assume he was using?
That’s what I thought.
And that’s why I object to the use of that term even outside of a legal context. When I hear “that guy’s a thief”, I assume he’s the kind of thug who goes around taking people’s property away from them, and I fear for the safety of my own property. If I knew that all he had done was make copies, I wouldn’t care. And when someone accuses me, or people I identify with, of stealing or being a thief, I feel like I’m being compared to those thugs, which of course is the point of using that word in the first place, right?
But there is no real, substantive difference between “tough negotiation is a subset of murder” and “copyright infringement is a subset of theft”. They’re both inaccurate when referring to the law–which I remind you is the context of the claims I was responding to–and they’re both based on word play. “Word W can refer to both action X and action Y, therefore X is a type of Y” is flawed logic.
The only question in that post is this: Mr2001, will you please explain to me how “murder and manslaughter are legal classifications of killing” leads to “jaywalking is a type of rape”?
The first statement doesn’t directly lead to the second; I said that in response to “In the same way that manslaughter is a type of killing, copyright infringement is a type of theft.” Copyright infringement is a type of theft only under a definition of theft which is not the one that typically springs to mind, nor is it the legal one (*).
Well, if we’re going to mix and match definitions, we can show that jaywalking is a kind of rape: one definition of rape is “an outrageous violation”, and although one might quibble over whether jaywalking is outrageous (“exceeding the limits of what is usual”, “not conventional or matter-of-fact”, “deficient in propriety or good taste”), it’s certainly a violation of the laws against jaywalking.
I hope you see how offensive it’d be if someone popped into a conversation about jaywalking and started referring to jaywalkers as “rapists”, even though it might be accurate in some twisted sense.
Anyway, I now see that you might not have been arguing the same legal point I was all geared up to argue against, having been arguing it with two other posters in this thread, so again, I apologize if I’ve misinterpreted you.
(* This is my state’s definition of theft - note the specific references to depriving the owner of his property.)
The quote is from an old text on Alchemy by Thomas Norton called The Ordinall of Alchemy.
Now, as far as your argument goes, I’m sorry but I find it completely unconvincing. It depends on there being only one meaning of the words theft and steal. I do not believe it has ever been the case that “to steal” meant only “to take property away”. All this stuff about rape and jaywalking is just a sideshow that is only relevent if “to steal property” and “to steal immaterial goods” have vastly different meanings or, indeed, if the latter is just something tacked on by people trying to get the masses riled up about software piracy.
Now, concerning your state’s definition of theft, I found it to be very interesting. I shall quote it here to make it easier to write about:
Ok, so ther first thing that I notice about this definition is that in each clause, we have “property or services”. So the Washington State legislature apparently defines theft, in part, as depriving someone of property or services. I am not a lawyer and I do not believe you are either, but I don’t see how you can deprive someone of services except to get them without paying. So I can see how you might be prosecuted, in your own state, for sneaking into movie theaters both for trespassing and theft. (Trespassing in the theater owner’s building and stealing his services. That’s just the theater owner.)
Now, concerning property, the state of Washington does not define property so narrowly as you would like. I do not believe that it means “stuff you can hold”. [url=http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p100.htm]Here* is a website (admittedly a poorly designed one) which offers a discussion on the meaning of property to legalese speakers. In particular we have
Perhaps Bricker or some other lawyer type can drop in and tell us what property means to the law. (There has to be another lawyer around, right? I can only ever think of one…) I do not think it falls into the narrow confines you are trying to hold it in.
sinjin
Yeah.
Sorry, wrong link. I meant to link the index.
No, not really. It only depends on the most common meaning of those words being the act of taking property away from its owner. I assume from your lack of response to paragraphs 3-5 of my post that you agree that’s the default meaning: if you heard “Something of mine was stolen today!” you wouldn’t assume he meant making unauthorized copies.
I contend they do have vastly different meanings, for reasons which have previously been explained. The reason we object to taking someone else’s property away from them is that you’re depriving them of it. That key element is missing from unauthorized copying.
Indeed. I assume they mean depriving someone of the time and effort they spent providing the services, that is, tricking someone into doing something for you by making them think you’ll pay for it.
I suppose that’s possible, although it’s hard to see how a theater owner is being deprived of any services in that situation, for all the reasons you mentioned in post #65. When you get a haircut and walk out without paying, you’ve caused the barber to spend time on your hair that he’d otherwise have used to do something else; when you sneak into a theater, you’ve put a tiny extra load on the air conditioning system, but other than that, the theater owners haven’t done anything that they wouldn’t still have done if you weren’t there.
Well, unless you can point to a case where someone has been convicted of theft for making unauthorized copies, I think we have to conclude that no property is stolen during an act of copyright infringement. There are enough people out there who want to equate infringement with theft that if it were possible to prosecute copying as theft, they’d have done it by now, don’t you think?
Thanks for trying, but trade secrets and copyrights aren’t the same thing.
Then in that case, it’s not “simply for making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work”, is it?
Consider what happens if you kill a pedestrian while you run through a red light: both murder (manslaughter?) and red-light-running take place at the same time, but that doesn’t mean running red lights is sometimes classified as murder, it just means you broke two laws at once.