Your absolutely right! but again the argument always seems gravitate away from the fact that my permission is required to make that copy of my car AND to take without my permission (which does include make a copy of (read the copyright info on your cd-covers.) constitutes theft.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

Okay, let's take apart your example one by one:

The car is stolen every night, plain and simple. The thief just happens to be particularly strange, and returns it.

There doesn't need to be physical damage to constitute theft. All that's needed is some felony was commited and someone removed something of yours. Both are described above.

The guy would have to have an insane lawyer to take the case, because he obviously stole it. Theft is not subsided because you didn't need the item at a certain time. There was a time, plain and simple, where the other person had it and you didn't.

These industries did do their homework, yes. But they found that they do not have as valid legal protection as they'd like, so they're seeking a propaganda campaign to make their legal protection stronger, first in the mind's of people and then in the law's of the country. It's up to people to not fall victim to false cries of thievery.

When someone *copies* something, at no time, ever, does the original leave your hands. Thus, there is no thievery, no matter how you try to twist and turn the subject.

Unfortunately they are well within their legal rights to do this (although I bet Tony Hawk wouldn’t care). The thing is, I still buy software, video games, music CD's and DVD's even though I know I can get them for "free".


The mindset seems to be that the some how the music industry or whomever is afraid of losing some little piece of chump change because of this. Although the statistics show that music, video, and software sales are not down at all. If anything they are up in most areas.

I suppose from a legal standpoint the copyright holders have to go after any and all infringements or it sets a precedent. Also historically speaking the legalities of a given situation seem to mean little when it's about about huge sums of money. Which apparently this whole file sharing threat is to somebody.

It's been suggested that we are twisting the issue. But I'm attempting to answer a fundamental question. Is it illegal?

Now people creatively turn this discussion into an issue of semantics. (well it's not really stealing if you make a copy so on and so forth.)

What is so complicated about obtaining something that when it was created SOMEONE agreed albeit through purchase to the following legal verbage:

(Unauthorized Duplication is a Violation of Applicable Laws.)

Unauthorized = Without Permission
Duplication = to make copies of
Violation = nonobservance of a condition
Applicable Laws = Rules and Procedures / limits

Although people seem to have a problem with the term "theft" as it relates to certain violations of the above legal verbage.

If I own an ISP and I provide access to my customers. Which means use of my network facilities and this (agreement) includes bandwidth limits, let's say 256Kbps bandwidth limitations.

Now this customer figures out that using a special software he's able to use 512Kbps bandwidth on my pipes.

Now the customer can argue that this is a performance gain for him as he did not modify my network in anyway to accomplish this higher speed.

So, to charge this individual with theft of service is unfair on my part because it doesn't satisfy the offenders definition of theft.

Overall I am suggesting that because I created the agreement --I get to determine what constitutes theft of my products, services and resources and the courts will back this agreement based on the legal verbage of my agreement with the customer.

Yes I think the problem is we want the so-called anarchy of the early days of the Internet. Unfortunately I think those days are gone. Besides it gives something for the lawyers to do.

So it's easier to discuss the semantics of the issue instead of the inevitable conclusion, which is of course that too this will be shut down eventually by either law or circumstances. We'll have to find a new way to share or just quit altogether and realize that George Orwell was only off by a few years.

I don 't think that they will stop sharing, I think that if sharing becomes impossible via the Internet people will return to SneakerNet.

LeeWare,

You're twisting the issue because you're combining the emotional appeal of the word 'theft' and 'steal' with the fact of illegal activities. For whatever reason, people prefer to understand the reason that something is illegal. Theft makes a close fit for these cases, but it is unfortunately not true. People are not stealing by copying. Yes, it is semantics -- but it is an important point. If people are to understand that what they are doing is illegal, they must understand why it is [illegal]. And the reason is *not* theft.

I challenge you to find a word that accurately describes, without the emotional baggage, the illegal activities of copying a copyrighted piece.

Yes, copying music and whatnot is illegal -- I have never disputed that. But no, it is not theft.

For the record, the terms "theft" and "steal" are not necessarily my words when it comes to describing some of the activities that take place on the Internet. However, these terms appear to be a consistent and prominent part of an industry's effort to highlight a problem. I assume that they chose these terms creatively for the intrinsic emotional value the words carry in order to indicate the seriousness of the problem.

Now, I agree that it is important for people to understand how what they are doing is illegal. But we also cannot ignore people and are fully aware of the legal consequences of such actions and sometimes, those people, act as if though they are targets of some kind of conspiracy to keep them from doing something they feel they have the right to do.

As for your challenge to find a word that could accurately describe the activities I would choose the word: Clandestine and more importantly the term clandestine-activity. I would add that it is on this basis the industry has gone after many peer-to-peer operations.

For those in our audience, clandestine = Kept or done in secret, often in order to conceal an illicit or improper purpose.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

Interesting Analyisis on the subject, however, I lean towards copyright infringment instead of theft. No one seems to mention the legalized theft which goes on daily for all peoples purchasing CDs. A CD cost probably less than a dollar to create, yet sells for 15.00 (out right robbery) of society as a whole (of course this is in my opinion).

True, the owner of any property weather it is real or intellectual has the right to sell said property for any amount he(she) sees fit and society as a whole certainly is not being forced to purchase CDs. Also, the owner has the right to recoupe initial funds spent on creating the product, but I do not ever see the price of CD's going down, once that CD has been deemed profitable within a certain percentage rate.

Since the advent of duplication technology someone has been whinning about being wronged. Cassette tapes were taking the bread and butter away from starving artists and from the industry itself, and Hollywood tried the same thing with video recorders. However one has to ask ones self just how much profit is enough? There will always be someone to purchase your work and generate royalities for you. Society as a whole does NOT do any damage to the profit system by duplicating and in my opinion the technology and sharing only generates more profits in the form of advertisments.

Hollywood certainly agrees. They found that their trojan horse has certainly been turned into a champion fighter for them instead of a defeat because they now earn as much on the Video rental sales as they do at box offices, yet in the 1980's it was nothing but a means to take the bread from their tables.

I also remember in the late 60's and very early 70's about how this EVIL machine called the Xerox copier was the Devil's own creation to infringe on copyrighted material and take money from the owners (not my analogy I assure you). What happened with that? Turned out to be businesses biggest asset in the office. What about the fax? I could go on, but the post is getting long.

This is not a moral post, nor is it a post to say that sharing files is right OR wrong. This post is to challenge the notion that file sharing in a detriment to industries. . . whether its evil incarnate, write or wrong is it is DAMAGING the industry, damaging the copyright holders, taking food out of the mouths of celebrities babies mouths. History records that every technology that has come along which delt with duplication was met with rabid, foaming at the mouth, critics who claimed that instead of making 10 million dollars they only made 9 million dollars.

In the end, in every case mentioned above, duplication has been proven to be a benefit not a harm and as I stated earlier, how much profit is enough? Does society really care about the difference of 9 or 10 million dollars when the average person comes up woefully short?

Dennis

" No one seems to mention the legalized theft which goes on daily for all peoples purchasing CDs. A CD cost probably less than a dollar to create, yet sells for 15.00 (out right robbery) of society as a whole (of course this is in my opinion)."

I would be hard pressed to challange any of your other statements as they gracefully highlight ligitimate aspects of the whole problem.

I would however expand on your above comments. The same thing happens in terms of computing technology. The myth about the prices of technology going down. They don't go down they stay the same. The technology changes.

Does anybody remember when a 486 cost around $2,200?

Consider the purchase history of a single pc buyer attempting to keep up with the latest and greatest pc technology.

This problem is exaggerated by a consumer that does not take advantage of the advanced features offered by the newest pc offering.

So let's say that for a five year period the latest and greatest pc of each respective year costs between $1000 - $1500. This customer upgrades his or her computing technology during each of these cycles. Now mind you that many people don't outgrow their computing needs they simply buy into the hype of new technology.

So the cost to this consumer is apx between $5,000 - $7,500 for the same computing functionality.

Now, your above average technology users tends to purchase technology based on the computing needs. So outgrowing technology occurs at a much slower pace if at all depending on the technology.

So that everyone's clear about what I'm suggesting. For people who use apx 20% of the technology available to them the cost of keeping up is painfully expensive.

So the story goes... Most people including myself have purchased music CDs for only one or two songs (The rest of the cd-I didn't like.) In cases such as these I paid a high price for a couple of tracks off of a twenty song CD. This is not a new problem for the music industry it goes all the way back to LPs and perhaps even beyond. (The industry needs to effectively address this.)

Alternatively, It would be unfair not to mention the times I've purchased a CD for a single song and discovered that I liked the whole CD. This was good because many of the tracks were not in circulation on the air-wave.