A lot of defenders of copyright often liken ip violation to theft. I remember a famous campaign where I'm from saying "piracy is theft". This is misinformation and fallacy. Copyright infringement is not theft, and there is no reason it should be treated as such
2. If you're making the argument that theft is limited to tangible things, well, you're entitled to that belief, but generally the consensus is that intangible property is still property. Money is property.
3. If you're making the argument that zero marginal cost items are not private property, that's an extremely radical position that I doubt you actually endorse after thinking about the incentives in a society where that was the dominant view.
The most legitimate argument for large scale copyright theft is eminent domain style seizure on the grounds that it benefits society. I would even endorse a weak version of that argument in narrow, well defined instances. And do. Copyright should expire, and it should definitely be harder to extend. And it should be possible to seize copyright from estates where the creator is no longer living, in certain circumstances, or at least expand fair usage in some graded manner.
That's not what's being argued about though, what people in this thread, and what people who steal music and software used to believe was that those products weren't really property and so they could take them. It's flimsy justification for bad behavior.
The argument is not about tangibility. If you steal someone's virtual money, they still cease to have it.
> If you're making the argument that zero marginal cost items are not private property, that's an extremely radical position
On the contrary, I'd argue that allowing people to literally own numbers is absurd.
2. No, that’s not the argument I’m making. If someone steals the money on your bank account, you still lose a quantifiable amount of that money. Your private property is being taken. If someone infringes on your copyright, they have infringed on your right to exclusivity to the content, but they have not stolen any of your property.
Note that here, I’m not making a judgment of value. Copyright infringement is a crime under the law of most countries, and it is definitely bad in some systems of values.
But it’s just not stealing. Something can be a crime without being thievery.
As a comparison (not metaphor), say somebody organizes a barbecue in your lawn while you’re absent, without your authorization. They bring their own stuff, they don’t damage anything, and when you come back you don’t even realize they were here.
Did they commit a crime? Yes, they infringed on your property
Did you lose money? Maybe. It may be so that they would have paid you money to use your lawn if they had no choice. Or maybe they wouldn’t have had that barbecue at all.
Did they steal something of yours? No. Their crime is trespassing, not thievery.
3. That’s closer, but distorted. First, I never argued that copyright should be abolished. You are arguing on a weaker version of something I did not even mention. The only thing I was commenting on was that your argument for it was based on calling ip violation thievery, which it is not. Most modern systems of values consider thievery wrong, thus you create an emotional response to copyright by likening the two. But that is not a correct argument because copyright infringement is not thievery.
> and what people who steal music and software used to believe was that those products weren't really property and so they could take them. It's flimsy justification for bad behavior.
Those products didn’t exist before they made illicit copies themselves. If I make a fake Louis Vuitton bag for myself and wear it, I did not steal it. I certainly infringed on the designer’s IP, but my crime is counterfeiting, not thievery.
> that's an extremely radical position that I doubt you actually endorse after thinking about the incentives in a society where that was the dominant view.
Now that’s the interesting part. Now that we have admitted that copyright infringement is not thievery, ie not innately morally wrong in at least some systems of values (and I’m pretty sure it is actually a very recent notion), we can ask ourselves the right question: does it have a positive impact on society? The answer to that is mixed:
- It creates incentives for artists and people who transmit knowledge
- But it also creates inequality in access to culture / knowledge
- And it creates counter-incentives for people to access culture and knowledge. Thus making individuals less learned and knowledgable
No doubt that the first effect largely compensates the 3rd, and that globally it has a good effect on society. Remains that it is not optimal at all.
But can we create a better system of incentives? That’s the real question. My take on that is "probably.".
"Steal" has many meanings and only some of them involve the loss of the thing stolen.
The Oxford American Dictionary provides several examples (I'm using "___" to indicate indentation in the following) that illustrate the range of what can be stolen:
steal | stēl |
verb (past stole | stōl | ; past participle stolen | ˈstōlən | )
1 [with object] take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it: thieves stole her bicycle | (as adjective stolen) : stolen goods | [no object] : she was found guilty of stealing from her employers.
• dishonestly pass off (another person's ideas) as one's own: accusations that one group had stolen ideas from the other were soon flying.
• take the opportunity to give or share (a kiss) when it is not expected or when people are not watching: he was allowed to steal a kiss in the darkness.
• (in various sports) gain (an advantage, a run, or possession of the ball) unexpectedly or by exploiting the temporary distraction of an opponent.
• Baseball (of a base runner) advance safely to (the next base) by running to it as the pitcher begins the delivery: Rickey stole third base.
2 [no object, with adverbial of direction] move somewhere quietly or surreptitiously: he stole down to the kitchen | figurative : a delicious languor was stealing over her.
• [with object and adverbial of direction] direct (a look) quickly and unobtrusively: he stole a furtive glance at her.
noun [in singular]
1 informal a bargain: for $5 it was a steal.
2 mainly North American an act of stealing something: New York's biggest art steal.
• an idea taken from another work: the chorus is a steal from The Smiths' “London”.
• Baseball an act of stealing a base.
• Basketball & Hockey an act of taking possession of the ball or puck from an opponent: point guard Kaleb Joseph finished with eight points, four steals, and seven assists.
PHRASES
steal someone blind
___informal see blind.
steal a march on
___gain an advantage over (someone) by acting before they do: stores that open on Sunday are stealing a march on their competitors.
steal someone's heart
___win someone's love.
steal the show
___attract the most attention and praise.
steal someone's thunder
___win praise for oneself by preempting someone else's attempt to impress. [from an exclamation by the English dramatist John Dennis (1657–1734), who invented a method of simulating the sound of thunder as a theatrical sound effect and used it in an unsuccessful play. Shortly after his play came to the end of its short run he heard his new thunder effects used at a performance of Macbeth, whereupon he is said to have exclaimed: ‘Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!’.]
> someone stole his intellectual property and distributed it for free
