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Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...

Wow, I mean, what a counterintuitive coincidence.

Trafficking in copyrighted works constitutes theft, but a private equity firm buying a company with debt, transferring the debt onto the company's balance sheet, allowing it to go into bankruptcy because of enormous debt load, and paying themselves huge bonuses along the way is not theft.

If it weren't for the fact that the U.S. federal code as it exists in June of 2020 is the definitive source of ethical and moral definitions, I would think that maybe something _untoward_ might be going on.

Seems coherent to me: you are not taking ownership of something without a contractual basis. It would I think constitute 'misuse of corporate assets' though.

> Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law.

Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that freeing slaves legitimately bought is defined as stealing property under US law.

That's not cute. It's incredibly appalling to compare the institution of slavery to people who pirate books simply because they want the benefits of authors' work without compensating those authors.

I'm not making that comparison. I'm not even saying that I disagree with your view on copyright. I'm just setting up this correspondence to show that the argumentation that you use is not valid.

Fine, but there is nothing at all invalid about my argument, because all I argued is that infringing copyrights is defined as stealing property under US law. That's not even an argument; it's simply a statement of fact. Unless you're talking about my statement that musings about how it shouldn't be considered stealing are irrelevant to the fact that it is, which is also not an argument, just a statement of fact. (Those musings are misguided as well as irrelevant, but I didn't advance any argument about them being misguided.)

Your rhetoric tricks are a bit tiring. The question is not settled by saying that something is illegal. Of course book sharing is illegal under the current law, that's the whole point. The law in question is stupid. People who respect the concept of law and the importance of laws are outraged by this, and want to use the legal system to change this stupid law. Repeating that "book sharing is illegal" as you do leads nowhere.

> People who respect the concept of law and the importance of laws are outraged by this, and want to use the legal system to change this stupid law. Some people. Other "people who respect the concept of law and the importance of laws" are outraged by the Internet Archive's infringement of copyright for no justifiable purpose and want to use the legal system to make sure copyright laws are followed. I don't know what you mean by rhetoric tricks. I've done nothing but explain the current status of copyright law. You're the one who resorted to some trick (which I still don't understand) comparing copyright to slavery. I agree this is tiresome, though.

Why should the federal government be taken as the authority on the definition in terms in a non-legal context (most of the conversation here is about an ethical argument)?

Topic is a legal battle. I would think the onus is on people wanting to use words that have both legal and non-legal meanings in their non-legal way to specify it.

The post I responded to explicitly acknowledged it wasn't a legal argument. At least using the phrase "philosophical musings" seems that way to me.

Unless you want to make the argument that a philosophical argument and a legal argument are equivalent (which I would actually be quite interested in seeing).

My understanding is that in Dowling v. United States, the Supreme Court specifically ruled that the very section of US code to which you link does not mean that copyright infringement is theft:

> Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...

I think that the argument which you present works well for personal use: the book $0 monetary value to you and you don't intend to redistribute it.

However, there are people who copy without authorization and make money from it. (For instance, Google: they collect money for YouTube Premium subscriptions, in exchange for which they let people watch all sorts of illegally reproduced material without commercial interruptions.)

Now suppose the copyright holder wants $1000 for the book. Nobody is willing to pay. You make copies available for $15. A few people are found who pay you. Are you not stealing that revenue from the copyright holder? Oh, but that copyright holder didn't want the money; or else they could have sold for $15 per copy themselves. You're just getting money that they copyright holder left on the table ...

My argument is really only about calculating economic damages from piracy, and how it is difficult without information about a pirate's willingess to pay. Even for personal use, if my willingness to pay is $50, but the price is $1000, and I pirate, that's a legitimate claim that piracy caused economic harm to the author. But, importantly, not $1000 of economic harm - just $50. I've deprived the author of the opportunity to price discriminate by putting the book on sale at some point in the future, or bulk discounting, or gathering data about the readership (to e.g. build an email list).

In the case you describe, there is a demonstrated willingness to pay $15, so you have enough information to calculate damages.

Suppose you are the copyright holder of a book, and are asking $1000. For years, there are no takers; you have no revenue. I come along and would like to read your book, but at most I'm willing to pay $10. I get a little idea: I advertise that I have this book for sale for $10 a copy, and start taking orders. I collect 99 paid orders. At that point, I have $990 of other people's money. I add $10 of my own to make $1000 and buy the book from you. Without your permission, I make 99 copies, and fill the orders.

Am I a pirate? Or a businessman who provided liquidity at a rationally determined market price, and enabled you to finally sell a copy and at least get a $1000?

Also, what amount did I demonstrate a willingness to pay? Certainly not $1000, right? It looks as if my willingness to pay was limited to the $10 of my own that I pitched in.

If I were to be sued, how should the damages be determined?

According to your "demonstrated willingness" concept for calculating damages, all 100 pirates demonstrated a willingness to pay $10, so the damages were $1000. But that's exactly what you got already. Everyone demonstrated willingness to pay $10, forked it over, and it was passed on to you.

So you see, this willingness to pay concept works very well with nonzero amounts too, in such a way that even pirates who charge money can come out smelling like roses.

The seller of the book has more money than they would have without the pirate.

You can argue about morality and the appropriateness of this behavior, and I'd probably agree with you on most points. The world you describe probably isn't the world I would prefer to live in, all things considered. But it's tricky argue that the bookseller is _economically_ worse off than they would have been without the pirate - as you just showed.

There is ain interesting flaw in: If you price a book above what I'm willing to pay for it, I'm never going to buy it.

Even if this is correct, you might have bought another book that was cheaper.

Case in point: Photoshop. It was pirated by everyone at home. But organizations could not pirate, so when they buy a photo editing package, it will be photoshop, as that what the employees know. If piracy at home was not an option, you'd see much more different photo packages at different price points in the market.

By spending the time to acquire and consume a copy of the content you have proven that your willingness to pay is above "$0".

Granted, perhaps not _much_ above 0. But still evidently above 0.

edit: Even if your "consumption" is merely acquiring and storing (or even acquiring and immediately discarding)

Sure. And the expected value of getting caught and paying fines, etc. etc. It's true, but I think the point stands.

> the target market must consist of people who want the product enough to pay for it.

That in fact doesn't work even in the case of actual stealing, otherwise we are forced to conclude that the target market for luxury cars includes teenage kids who hot-wire them and take them for joyrides.