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Comment by rick888 | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting, because it works on the same principal as software piracy: The original isn't "stolen" it's merely copied. The original is still intact.

I'm wondering if the same people that are so zealous and pro-piracy would be fine with someone taking their site and duplicating it.

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IS IT the same principle? Usually pirated software distributors don't claim original authorship.

I'm not saying that the "merely copied" argument is correct, I'm just saying that I think the situations are different.

The main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy.

Just like with the OP's site.

I do think that's true, which is why I'd call this something like "plagiarism" rather than "stealing". The issue isn't that anyone's had an item removed from their possession (as with theft), but someone is trying to pass off someone else's work as their own. Like if I were to publish a novel, but lift large parts of the novel from an existing novel. I guess you could colloquially say that I've "stolen text" from that novel, much as people say that Microsoft "stole" the recycling bin from Apple's trash can, but plagiarism seems to get at the underlying issue more directly.

"The main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy."

No, the main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that piracy is not stealing. Stealing is the substraction of property, which piracy isn't.

This isn't stealing either, this is plagiarism.

If we don't name things with their correct names, we create false associations, and that makes arguing about those things needlesly complicated. It's hard enough getting a consensus on anything related to IP as it is, so we should avoid ambiguous syntax wherever possible.

Violent agreement. You and GP seem to be saying exactly the same thing -- because the original still exists, there is no subtraction of property, and it is not stealing.

They are saying the same thing as far as that goes, but rick888 then uses that as a jumping-off point to misrepresent a (fairly OT) position he doesn't agree with. He's conflating the arguments of "piracy is not stealing" and "piracy is not necessarily bad," which are only thinly connected (being theft would make piracy almost certainly wrong, but not being theft doesn't confer any moral value either way).

Very interesting comment. For me the line is profiting from the copied content/software. I am opposed to people selling pirated movies on the streets and not so to people downloading and watching them in their homes.

So, if I copied your startup (website, graphics, and name), and didn't make a profit on it (even if you were charging), it's okay?

The name would be covered under trademark law, and the website/graphics copying could be considered plagiarism if you are attempting to pass them off as your own.

On the other hand, someone that copies a movie is neither:

1) Claiming to be the movie studio that produced and/or distributed the movie.

2) Claiming that they were the producer/creator of the movie.

Comparing the two situations doesn't work because the only common factors are that copying happened and that they're both related to the nebulous term 'IP.'

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