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

[prosfilaes]

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.

Is custody of a child property? Because the owner of the custody can lose their exclusive right to raise a child. If you start phrasing things that way, there's very few laws that can't be stated in terms of property; assault, rape, speeding (the government's capacity to regulate the speed limit on a road), violating FCC broadcast regulations, as I pointed out before libel and slander.

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.

In practice, if you have $1000 in the bank, it's like having $1000 stored under your mattress, only more convenient. The federal government guarantees that you can get your money back through the FDIC. The fact that it is assignable, chargeable, etc. depends on the fact that considering the fungible nature of money, it's as if you did have an exclusive chunk of money sitting in the account.

 

[Sanglorian]

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.

Trespass, vandalism, emitting a foul odour from an adjacent property, or building a shed so high it obscures a vista, are some examples of civil wrongs that deprive one of certain benefits of ownership, but which I would not consider acts of theft in the way that the crimes of burglary and shoplifting are.

 

[Morrus]

Does it really matter if someone - other than a lawyer in an actual courtroom - uses the word "theft", "copyright violation", "piracy", or "skullduggery" to describe the act?

The word's irrelevant. The law defines the crime and its consequences; it doesn't care what you colloquially choose to call it whether we personally "consider it theft" or not, or anything else. It's just a word; it may as well be the word "qwertyboopery". The fact is, it's a crime with its own definition which has little to do with common uses of the words involve.

Hey, I consider it to be qwertyboopery!

 

[Sanglorian]

Does it really matter if someone - other than a lawyer in an actual courtroom - uses the word "theft", "copyright violation", "piracy", or "skullduggery" to describe the act?

The word's irrelevant. The law defines the crime and its consequences; it doesn't care what you colloquially choose to call it whether we personally "consider it theft" or not, or anything else. It's just a word; it may as well be the word "qwertyboopery". The fact is, it's a crime with its own definition which has little to do with common uses of the words involve.

Hey, I consider it to be qwertyboopery!

I like the idea of calling it qwertyboopery, because as you say it's a civil wrong that has little to do with common uses of the words theft and property. But I think it absolutely matters whether copyright is or is not described as property, and whether infringement is or is not described as theft. Those words are how we make sense of copyright and infringement, and are a framework for making value judgements about them. The problems caused by copyright infringement are real, but very different from the problems caused by theft.

 

[prosfilaes]

Does it really matter if someone - other than a lawyer in an actual courtroom - uses the word "theft", "copyright violation", "piracy", or "skullduggery" to describe the act?

As I said above, yes. If it's property, then limitations on it have to be justified, just like takings on other property. If it's a monopoly that society extends for its own purposes, then extensions on it need to be justified in terms of value to society. And in a democracy, even a representative democracy, how the people see it does change in which way the laws grow on the subject.

 

[pemerton]

Is custody of a child property?

Probably not. It's neither assignable nor chargeable.

In practice, if you have $1000 in the bank, it's like having $1000 stored under your mattress, only more convenient. The federal government guarantees that you can get your money back through the FDIC.

I live in Australia, where bank deposits are not insured. Also, the bank is just an example - I could equally be talking about a deposit in an S&L, or some other non-insured financial service provider.

The fact that it is assignable, chargeable, etc. depends on the fact that considering the fungible nature of money, it's as if you did have an exclusive chunk of money sitting in the account.

This is not correct as a statement either of law or finance.

For instance, a Picasso painting is not fungible but nevertheless can be assigned, or used as security. Fungibility is irrelevant to something having the general attributes of property.

And to flip it around - blood is basically fungible (relative to blood type) but, at least in Australian law, is not property because Australian law, as a general proposition, does not recognise property in body parts.

Your simple exlusivity definition of property doesn't work even for joint tenancies, in which both parties enjoy an undivided share in the property in question.

As I said upthread, I'm not expressing a view on your broader points about copyright - I'm just talking about what is or isn't property. (For what it's worth - Woody Guthrie had similar views towards banks and other financiers as you have towards copyright owners, but he didn't feel the need to express that view by denying that they owned things. "Is owned" or "is property" does not entail "is justified" or "is socially functional".)

 

[Morrus]

As I said above, yes. If it's property, then limitations on it have to be justified, just like takings on other property. If it's a monopoly that society extends for its own purposes, then extensions on it need to be justified in terms of value to society. And in a democracy, even a representative democracy, how the people see it does change in which way the laws grow on the subject.

I don't even know what that means, or if it relates to my question at all. I'm talking about use of colloquial English on a D&D forum.

 

[pemerton]

As I said above, yes. If it's property, then limitations on it have to be justified, just like takings on other property. If it's a monopoly that society extends for its own purposes, then extensions on it need to be justified in terms of value to society.

You are focusing very narrowly on one constitutional context - the US Constitution's takings clause - to underpin much broader claims about what is or isn't property. There are many countries in the world besides the US, virtually all of them have a law of copyright, but not all of them have a comparable takings clause (eg Australia has an acquisition clause, which operates very differently; the UK has no constitutional restriction on takings or acquisitions).

You are also making other assumptions about property rights, such as that rights conferred by "society" - which, in practice will mean via legislation - are not owed the same protection as "genuine" property rights (which, presumably, are common law rights - though of course they were conferred by "society", too, namely by English judges in the late mediaeval and early modern periods). But in Australian constitutional law, property rights created by statute, including copyright, enjoy the same degree of constitutional protection as property rights arising at common law. (It is not always obvious when a right created by statute is a property right, but that is a separate matter.)

 

[prosfilaes]

I'm not going argue about whether or not it's property or not more, but...

Woody Guthrie had similar views towards banks and other financiers as you have towards copyright owners

If you believe that, you have completely misread me, because I have expressed no opinions whatsoever on this thread about copyright owners. Nothing that I've written here is negative towards copyright holders or the general idea of copyright.

I don't even know what that means, or if it relates to my question at all. I'm talking about use of colloquial English on a D&D forum.

I responded to 'copyright infringement...which is itself just a special subset of the crime of "theft."', which is not casual use, but a definition of copyright infringement as theft. It seemed to matter enough to Dannyalcatraz to claim that copyright infringement is theft; I'm not sure why disagreeing with that is that surprising. We both have concerns about how it's treated in society, which includes a D&D forum.

 

[Umbran]

Is custody of a child property?

Currently, in the US, Europe, and most of the rest of the world, no. But that is because you cannot own *people* - child or otherwise. Not all rights (or obligations) with respect to a thing are rights of property. Your relationship with a child is fundamentally different than your relationship to any piece of property, and so this is a poor example to work with.