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Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

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Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#41

Post by tvon »

byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

> If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item.

Theft covers more than just the taking of physical property. You can steal an idea, for example.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#42

Post by lobo-tuerto »

It would be interesting if they mentioned the proportion/amount of money that goes to songwriters/artists per song.

If they want that lead balloon to be a golden parachute, they can make it, just rising the percentage of the royalties they pay to the artist.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#43

Post by chc »

AlexC04 wrote: post #36
byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

| Since all of these songs are always instantly available | to me, these artists are still within reach, even the | one-hit-wonders from yesteryear. If I hadn't downloaded | Fastball's "Outta My Head" back in 1998, I would never | have gone to see them perform at the Viper Room in 2008 | (it was the illegal download of a B-side that made me | appreciate them more than hearing "The Way" on the | radio). While that may…

It's not "The ends justify the means." It's "This is not theft. It's something quite different that can actually be beneficial in ways that theft reasonably cannot."

To wit: What share does YC get if I never become a fan of the band at all?

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#44

Post by paulgb »

tptacek wrote: post #18
byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

I love it that people who simply take anything sold under terms they disagree with also demand political correctness from the rest of the world and, particularly, from the industries who they're taking things from.

That's a valid point. Unfortunately nobody likes to be called a hypocrite (even if they are), so you're getting undeserved down-votes. (edit: happily, by the time I finished my comment you'd been upvoted out of the gutter)

I'm not saying I've never pirated anything, but I find the sense of entitlement some people have about it makes honest discussion difficult.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#45

Post by petercooper »

I've seen citations that the common law requires the property to be "tangible" for theft or larceny to have occurred. In the legal, British definition, however, this is not required.

Calling piracy "theft" doesn't require considering whether piracy results in lost sales. Instead, does piracy involve dishonest appropriation of someone else's property (virtual or otherwise)? Yes, usually. But, importantly, does piracy involve permanently depriving that person of that same property? If merely taking a photo, recording sound, or copying some files, clearly not.

To me it seems that if theft were legally defined as merely the dishonest appropriation of someone else's property without their consent, piracy is theft. If as is typical, though, theft requires depriving the owner of that same property, piracy is clearly not theft.

I'm no lawyer, so what's the legal definition of theft in the US? In the UK, "permanent deprivation" is required and so piracy is certainly not "theft."

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#46

Post by cynicalkane »

byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

I would like to see something like a Netflix or Hulu for music. Something where you have unlimited access to all the music you want to listen to, but musicians are fairly compensated for their work. The Internet has made the information cost of music distribution vanishingly small, but there's no way for producers or consumers to take advantage of this.

Actually, now that I think about it, there were once services like this... anyone know what happened to them? The closest thing I can think of is Pandora, but having to be at the mercy of the site's RNG only suits certain listening patterns.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#47

Post by petercooper »

jeromec wrote: post #27
byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

Devils advocate: there are obviously a lot of people that write programming code here. That is something created within each person's mind, and brought into existence -- just like a song. How would any of us view having our computers hacked into at the leisure of would-be users of our programs who sought to copy our code and then use it? Would we view this as theft?

It depends on the jurisdiction but other crimes are defined as taking place in such a system, such as trespass, gaining unauthorized access to a computer system, copyright infringement, and invasion of privacy.

These things can be considered, in some cases, to be even more severe than theft. "Theft" is a highly charged word even though copying source code from a nuclear missile silo would be punished more severely than the theft of a chocolate bar from a 7 Eleven.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#48

Post by tptacek »

alextgordon wrote: post #30
tptacek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it that people who simply take anything sold under terms they disagree with also demand political correctness from the rest of the world and, particularly, from the industries who they're taking things from.

Believe it or not, people don't like being called thieves, especially when they're not stealing anything. I may be a pirate, but if US TV companies actually gave me a choice to buy their programmes with some degree of timeliness, perhaps I wouldn't need to be.

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I actually think what you'd doing is a form of theft. I don't think the word is inappropriate. You are free to disagree. I think many objections to the word "theft" in this context are reasonable, even I don't agree with them.

But I am genuinely amused that people expect political correctness from people whose livelihoods they are probably disrupting unlawfully. (I chose my words carefully there).

It is especially interesting to hear this from a Cocoa developer, by the way, considering the rate at which Cocoa apps are pirated. (I'm not calling you a hypocrite; no, quite the opposite. "Suicidal" might be a better epithet here.)

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#49

Post by kyro »

byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

Do you hold the same opinion when it comes to software? And by software I mean code you've spent months laboring over that you perhaps hope to make some sort of living off of.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#50

Post by niels_olson »

fendrak wrote: post #34
byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

The only problem with this argument is that it's made only with regard to you, the consumer, vs. the content creator/distributor. If theft is defined only as the removal of a physical good from one individual to another without consent, then indeed, it's not theft in that sense. However, if theft is defined as depriving an individual of what they are due for providing some product/service, then this is theft. One way…

You know, if it were theft, I think the cases would be tried as cases of theft. I love a semantic argument as much as the next guy, but I find I'm most successful in those arguments when I avidly defer to time-proven definitions. And when those definitions have been so thoroughly debated that they have been intrenched in law almost universally consistent across multiple nations and languages, I really defer to those.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparis...

I hope you take the opportunity at some point in your life to revisit your opinion on this issue.

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