Lew said:
Copyright violation also is defined under criminal law.
True in some countries. The US copyright has some infringements
that are considered criminal offenses, not merely being illegal,
in particular § 506. The DMCA added more cases.
Most copyright infringements are civil cases, though.
Depriving someone of income from their legally-guaranteed "monopoly"
(as copyright objectors are fond of labeling intellectual property
rights) is theft in that it takes from the owner that which is
rightfully theirs.
No. It's deriving them of potential income. It is *not* theft. It is
no more theft than a competing, better, product also reducing the
expected income. Only in this case, there's a law prohibiting the
action being used to do so, and that law also says how it can be
punished.
Damages can be awarded for the projected loss of income. That's quite
different from what would happen in a case of theft.
You may not think it wrong, but that is beside the point. It's
illegal. Change the law or pay the penalty for violating it.
Never claimed it wasn't illegal. It's just not *theft* any more
than inflammatory remarks are arson.
Most people, or at least as represented by their governments, disagree
with your characterization of copyright as wrong. Heck, far from
shortening the duration, the U.S. recently pulled the mickey-mouse
extension, making copyright inhere for 99 years, surviving a Supreme
Court challenge to do so.
True. Sadly.
The monopoly *itself* can be seen as property. It has value, and can, in
some cases, be traded or inherited.
The covered "intellectual property" is not property in any legal sense
(being neither real estate nor personal property).
<URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property>
The main reason for not being property is that it's not tangible.
If I buy a DVD, then I *own* that (physical) DVD. I am also licensed
to use the movie on it, which is otherwise governed by the copyright
of that author(s). Nobody owns the movie. I own the copy. The copyright
holder has a monopoly on some actions related to the (ideal) work.
Taking someone's use of it is still theft.
You can't take "use". You can take a physical copy (that's theft)
or you can create an unlicensed copy (that's copyright infringement),
but then nobody has lost their copy and nobody is missing anything
(except a potential income from you if you had bought it ... which
nobody can know if you would).
You may disagree. If you steal my copyrighted work, I will pursue
prosecution of you even though you disagree, and let the courts
determine how much you stole, and how much you will thus have to
repay.
I agree that you should prosecute the *copyright infringement* and
be awarded *damages*.
If you actually go to court with a charge of "theft", you'll be
laughed out of the courtroom.
You will be a person convinced that you didn't steal while
still working off the judgment.
I'd be right. Most likely I'd have lost a civil lawsuit and would
be paying off a fine and damages (and your court costs, which is
probably the largest amount).
Now, if it had been theft, which is always a crime, you wouldn't
have to prosecute me at all. You just report it to the police, and
they'll take it from there.
Call it what you will, it's a crime and the copyright violator
shouldn't have stolen, the thief.
I call it copyringht infringement. It's a crime (or at least illegal)
and the copyright infringer shouldn't have infringed, the infringer.
Copyringht infringement is not theft, any more than it is murder.
Using an emotionally loaded but incorrect word for something is,
putting it blunt, misinformation. Muddling concepts together can only
lead to misunderstanding and confusion.
People making money from copyright monopolies (e.g., the RIAA) want to
increase the confusion to the point where everybody loses the ability
to distinguish two fundamentally different concepts and equates
copyright infringment with theft, and intellectual property with
roperty, because at that point they hope to be able to change the law
to give them even further rights, and remove rights from the users of
their works (which they'll then sell back for more money). The more
they succeede, the less people understand about the law they are
governed by, and the rights it does give them.
Don't think for a second that it's a coincidence that a person like
Jack Valente says that "copying is stealing". He had enough lawyers
to know better, but he wanted you to believe it.
/L 'Keep distinct concepts distinct, please!'
