Pathfinder 1E Holy heck! There's a guy STUPID enough to ask for pirated materials on the Pathfinder FACEBOOK PAGE!!!!

[Vegepygmy]

There's no "only" about it, except one you put there.

And it's ironic that he did...

Different crimes have different technical legal definitions. Sure, from your point of view, it all feels similar, and all of them are wrong - the terminology isn't a value judgement; "theft" isn't "worse" than "infringement".

Indeed. As a criminal prosecutor, I can assure you I'd much rather be convicted of petty larceny (i.e., theft of a book) than copyright infringement.

The consequences of the latter are far worse than the former.

 

[Seether]

This kind of makes me sad. I want to support the companies and the authors/artists that work so hard. It's so far out of my realm of "ok."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No, copyright infringement is not a subset of the crime of theft. Totally different sections of the law. It's the violation of a state-given monopoly over certain actions, which is quite different from the taking of property. The US Constitution clearly separates it from the Lockean life, liberty and property, by justifying it as not an natural right and chronologically limiting it: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times..."

Location within this code or that means nothing- many different kinds of the taking of property have their own unique codes, rules, and enforcement penalties. Nonetheless, they all have elements in common, such as:

Black's Law Dictionary
Theft: is..the act of stealing. The taking of property without the owner's consent...the fraudulent taking of personal property belonging to another, from his possession, for from the possession of some person holding the same for him, without his consent, with intent to deprive the owner of the value of the same, and to appropriate it to the use or benefit of the person taking...Theft is any of the following acts done with the intent to deprive the owner permanently of the possession, use, or benefit of his property: (a) Obtaining or exerting unauthorized control over property; (b) Obtaining by deception control over property; or (c) Obtaining by threat control over property; or (d) Obtaining control over stolen property knowing the property to have been stolen by another.

and

Black's Law Dictionary:
Stolen: Acquired, or possessed, as a result of some wrongful or dishonest act or taking, whereby a person willfully obtains or retains possession of property which belongs to another, without or beyond any permission given, and with the intent to deprive the owner of the benefit of ownership (or possession) permanently.

(emphasis mine)

By downloading without paying, you exercise unauthorized control over another person's property- you've committed a theft.

By infringing on someone's copyright, you are stealing because:

1) One of the fundamental powers of owning a copyright is the right to distribute or to choose not to distribute by any legal means. If you obtain copyrighted material without compensating the IP holder, you've done so by not honoring the terms by which he has offered to distribute the IP. IOW, you have deprived the owner with at least one benefit of ownership- the right to sell (or not sell) it to you.

2) You have intentionally obtained & retained possession of the property without/beyond the permission of the owner.

 

[prosfilaes]

Ultimately it's a definitional game, but when you say that copyright is property, that's part of what I'm arguing against. One essence of property is that it's exclusive; if you have two apples, and I take one, you only have one left. Copyright is not like that; if I make a copy of a book, the owner of the copyright still has everything they started out with. If you only "own" property for a limited time, then you don't really own it; you're leasing it, but when a work goes into the public domain, it doesn't become property of the government or anyone else; the property-like aspects of it just disappear. It strikes me more akin to libel in some ways; you have a limited legal right to prevent other people from printing something. You could make an analogy treating your reputation as a form of property, but it's not usually done.

Again, the US Constitution does not treat copyright as property. Property is something just assumed in the Constitution; copyright gets its own article and gets called out as being of limited time and for a specific purpose. And when Congress did get around to passing a copyright law, it was for maps, charts and books for 14 years, and another 14 if the author is still alive. Yes, there's a lot of variety in how property is handled, but a limited duration that varies depending on the lifespan of someone who is not necessarily the owner? That's bizarre and unique when thinking about it as a form of property.

 

[prosfilaes]

As for why this matters to me, I have done a lot of work for Wikisource and Project Gutenberg. Basically the entire collection of human knowledge prior to 1923 is available to any American through Google Books and the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg and HathiTrust. Because the way the US law is set up, works published in 1923 have to be assumed to be in copyright, and thus very few of them are available for free, and less then 1% of them are still in print in any way.

If you view this as a matter of property, that probably isn't really relevant to what to do to the duration of copyright law. If you view it as a limited-time monopoly to encourage the sciences and useful arts, that's tragic; how is letting someone possibly related to the original author monetize the 1% (and probably more like the 0.1% of profitable works) worth keeping the 99% of remaining books inaccessible?

 

[Sanglorian]

By downloading without paying, you exercise unauthorized control over another person's property- you've committed a theft.

Both of those quotes emphasise "intent to deprive the owner" of the benefit of ownership/possession. When unauthorised copying takes place, the owner is not deprived of ownership or possesion of their de jure monopoly.

 

[pemerton]

when you say that copyright is property, that's part of what I'm arguing against. One essence of property is that it's exclusive; if you have two apples, and I take one, you only have one left. Copyright is not like that; if I make a copy of a book, the owner of the copyright still has everything they started out with.

I am not going to express any view on your bigger complaint about copyright law.

But what you say here is not correct: if I make an unauthorised copy of a book, the owner of the copyright has lost something, namely, their capacity to regulate the making of copies of that book.

Also, exclusivity is not essential to property: my bank account - which is, as a matter of law, a right to call upon the bank to pay me money - is not exclusive. Many more people have accounts with the bank than just me, and many more have accounts than the bank's capacity to pay out money at any given time. My bank account is still property, however. For example, it is assignable, chargeable etc.

 

[ThirdWizard]

1) One of the fundamental powers of owning a copyright is the right to distribute or to choose not to distribute by any legal means. If you obtain copyrighted material without compensating the IP holder, you've done so by not honoring the terms by which he has offered to distribute the IP. IOW, you have deprived the owner with at least one benefit of ownership- the right to sell (or not sell) it to you.

2) You have intentionally obtained & retained possession of the property without/beyond the permission of the owner.

I realize that there are many countries with distinct copyright and theft laws. I will point out, however, that the U.S does have precedence in Dowling v. United States where the Supreme Court ruled that copyright infringement is not stealing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I realize that there are many countries with distinct copyright and theft laws. I will point out, however, that the U.S does have precedence in Dowling v. United States where the Supreme Court ruled that copyright infringement is not stealing.

...under the definition of of 18 U.S.C. 2314, the statute under which Dowling was tried and convicted, not in the general sense of the legal definition supplied above. And here's the problem with trying to say that the Court was generally saying CI is not theft.

The Court, among other things, pointed out that the Feds were using 2314 in order to get access to the threat of the 10 years imprisonment portion of that statute, when there was already another explicit section of the law dealing with Dowling's behavior, namely 17 U.S.C. 506...which provided only a max 5 year imprisonment penalty.

The Court saw the Feds were gaming the system, didn't care for it, and appropriately swatted them down.

IOW, one of the things Dowing stands for is not so much "CI is not theft", but rather that the Feds better use the correct statutes to try CI cases- no game playing.

This matters: definitions vary from code to code. If you look at the term "Vehicle" as it is used in US law, you're going to find SEVERAL definitions, and sometimes, certain things get defined as a vehicle in own law that does not include things defined in other laws. If you only looked at one law, you might have a very different view of what the law thought a vehicle was than someone looking at another section of code.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Both of those quotes emphasise "intent to deprive the owner" of the benefit of ownership/possession. When unauthorised copying takes place, the owner is not deprived of ownership or possesion of their de jure monopoly.

There is more than one benefit of ownership, more than mere physical possession. Properly is a bundle of rights, which includes the ability to control methods, times and places in which another may assume control of said property.

CI violates those rights.