I believe that is called copyright infringement. Again, nothing is being "taken" from the writer if the writer still has that item afterwards. This is the difference between "moving" something to one's own possession so that the other person does not have it and "copying" it so the other person still has it.No, I'm arguing that if something has not been taken away from a person, it has not been stolen from him. At least not in the traditional sense of the word.If I steal a music CD, I take it from the store and the store has one less CD. If I copy it inside the store, the store still has the CD, even though I also have the data now. That is the difference.That is copyright infrigement. Stealing a CD, yes, it is theft because you are taking something from someone so they no longer have it. If I take your hat from you, you are out of a hat. That is theft. If I create my own hat simply from looking at your hat, I have not stolen anything from you.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

You are attempting to water down the crime by arguing over the semantics of the word 'theft.' It is a catch all word that most people understand to be aquiring something that belongs to somebody else without a right to do so.

benefiting from the use of their idea

If you make an exact copy of my hat you have not stolen it from me, you have infringed on the copyright of the hat designer/manufacturer (or whoever owns the rights to the hat design). Under U.S. law you own the rights to anything that you create and you are entitled to compensation if you choose to sell a license to use it. Obviously musicians create music because they love music, but they also own whatever they create. It is for them to enjoy, but they can choose to sell license for others to enjoy it, the are entitled to the money that buyers are obliged to pay in order to also enjoy it.


You and I are not seeing eye to eye in our discusion so condider this:

If a record company brings suit against you for distributing music, the defense that since the artist did not lose the song and can still profit from it, it was not copyright infringement, will not hold water in court and you will lose.

Who says I am watering down anything? I am simply pointing out that "copying" is not "stealing," at least not in the traditional sense of the word.Exactly, I've not stolen it from you.Okay, but copying the music from them is still not stealing because you are, in a sense, creating an identical copy. Stealing would be taking their piece of paper where they wrote it down.Who said it was not copyright infringement? I said specifically that it was.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

Does it make it any less of crime? What you are doing is denying the owner the money they are entitled to under the agreement for your use of the music.

There really isn't such a hard line between larceny and copyright infringement. With larceny you are taking the property or money away from somebody, and with copy right infringement you are denying them from every receiving the property or money that is rightfully theirs. Either way, they do not possess what belongs to them.

It definitely makes it a different type of crime. Whether less or more I do not know. However, here you are assuming that the person who receives the pirated version of the work would have bought it in the first place.In traditional theft, you are taking away property from them. In copyright infringement, you are copying it without taking it away from them and letting someone else copy it from you. Saying that the person would "lose" the money is an assumption because you have to prove that the person who received the pirated copy would have, without the pirated copy, purchased the legal one. With traditional theft, it is pretty clear: the person had an object and now he does not because you took it.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

You cannot honestly expect to claim that a copyright which continues 50 years after the death of the creator is in keeping with

Patent law, to me, clearly fits the above. 20 years, to the person or company who filed it or to whoever they sell it to, provides for the promotion of science and the useful arts (while simulatenously encouraging them to go out and produce more).

Copyright law has grown far beyond that. It provides the creator with a copyright which is only restricted by their own mortality, and even then manages to continue for another 50 years.

Hell if the companies advocating extending copyright law had their way, we'd be paying one of them for everytime someone goes and makes photocopies of shakespeare. Or kids singing happy birthday to a friend will have to shell out their money to the RIAA. Quite frankly, they have used congress to make copyright laws ridiculous and over reaching and in doing so, have cost themselves the sympathy of the american people.

Quite frankly, they aren't entitled to any money garnered from a retroactive copyright extension. And there is no economic basis for engaging in them.

One limits the use of a good. As far as the economics of it all goes, it's about as serious as jumping a turnsty in the subway system. And there is no economic benefit garnered from the retroactive extension of copyright laws.

Here's my problem with copyrights.
At one time to copy a book, a scribe would have to literally copy it down by hand, there was no royalty payment.
With typesetting and publishing there came the idea of copyright, to protect the publisher, who had invested in setting the type and printing an edition, and now another publisher had printed the same thing, the remedy was that all the proceeds(proceeds not profits) from the sale of the infringing edition would go to the rights holder, and the unsold infringing copies would be destroyed.
I'm fine with that, but when people copy something and don't charge for it, there aren't any proceeds to surrender, so the punishment amounts to a fine of $0.
So the law was changed to calculate an implied value, every time a song is copied the implied cost of actually purchasing the music at full price is tallied up. This is where the ridiculous numbers come from, the billions in lost revenue, the reality is that RIAA is trying to protect the old way of distributing music, which they have locked up, from the new way.
It's as if the owners of Livery stables got a law passed that only they could sell gasoline, or the railroads got a law passed that only they could operate passenger airplanes, because they owned "distance transportation".

The way I see it, information is speech, and that's supposedly free.

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Here's how I see it. I am an artist. If someone goes to my website and prints out one of my paintings and frames it and hangs it on their wall, they have stolen a copy of my painting from me. They should have contacted me to buy a print. But instead they have my art and I got ripped off.

It's the same with music.

Exactly.

It may not seem like a big deal when it is millionair entertainers (I hesitate to call most mainstream artists musicians), but what happens when people start stealing books? Google is making a big push to make books available online, but it has to potential to really hurt authors when people start stealing those too.

You can water it down all you want with the correct legal terms, but it is still fundamentally wrong.

Sam, that someone MADE a copy of your painting using his printer. The idea is your's, but that piece of paper with ink on it that is identical to your painting is still their object. The only way to steal your item from you would be to break into your house and steal the painting.Perhaps. Doesn't mean they stole it, though.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

But still not stealing. The only way they could steal the books is if they break into the local library and pack all the books into bags and take off. COPYING != TAKING.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

Again, you are arguing semantics. Why don't people just accept the fact that downloading music is wrong. Maybe some more lawsuits would wake some people up.

Wrong and right are very subjective. If you take someone's idea, reproduce it and sell it without permission and against the creator's wishes, that is probably wrong. However, when you copy software for yourself, you are not "taking" anything from the original maker. That is a fact. Obviously, I realize that copyrights and patents exist for a reason. However, you have to admit that the "music writers are losing money from P2P filesharing" argument relies entirely on the assumption that the person who downloaded the music file and did not buy the music CD was actually going to buy the music CD had the filesharing option been unavailable. The fact is, many people who download music would not have paid for it even without P2P, as music is not often classified as a "need."

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

Wrong and right is not subjective when speaking in terms of unjustly violating other's rights. There is no way to get around the fact that you do not have a right to download music without purchasing a license that allows you to do so