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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 1558109" data-attributes="member: 19675">This is SERIOUSBlack's Law Dictionary:Which I then said that downloading an unauthorized PDF is theft.To which ByronD wrote in replyTo which I respond that my quote was not complete- the actual definition goes on longer than one of my posts.  However, "the sole and exclusive privilege of multiplying copies of the same and publishing and selling them" implies as much.  If the copy you download is unauthorized, you have cost the author his sale by taking his property as surely as if you had snatched it hot off of the photocopier.  That is THEFT.And if you check out the STATUTES, not the definition, you will see that copyright infringement has legal penalties including fines and imprisonment, depending on the egregiousness of the infringement, that are based on various theft statutes.  Infringement varies from merely appropriating a bit of this or that, in which case you may just be asked to pay a royalty, to complete misappropriation of the entire work (commonly known as bootlegging) which may net you a couple of years and a few hundred K in fines...per violation.  Its all considered theft in the eyes of the law, the only difference is how much of a penalty you'll pay, which is controlled by how much you stole.Go look at the penalties the Verve had to pay when frontman Richard Ashcroft lifted a portion of an obscure Rolling Stones track for their Bittersweet Symphony.  He just infringed a little bit from a Stones song nobody would remember...except when the song shot up the charts, the Stones' legal team swung into action.  The band sacrificed ALL of their royalties from that song to the Stones and supposedly had to credit the Stones with a writing credit on future pressings of the disc (read that as ADDITIONAL costs).  The band broke up because they couldn't afford to stay together.===EDIT: That is absolutely correct.However, if you buy a copy of RtL, and lose it and have no copies of your own already made, you don't have the right to grab an unauthorized copy off of the internet.In fact, there is no fact situation involving the phrase "I downloaded an unauthorized copy" that will survive a legal test.  Stolen property, regardless of method, belongs to the original owner regardless of the passage of time (one and only one exception-the doctrine of adverse posession, which only applies to land).  That unauthorized copy on the net is considered stolen property by the law.  If you download it, you are in possession of stolen property, same as if you'd pickpocketed someone or paid for it with a counterfeit $20.Of course, this is the perpetual nightmare for museums, but that's another discussion.</blockquote>

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