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Comment by drewblaisdell | Hacker News Reader

Just a note regarding most of the piracy discussion I have seen take place on HN in the last day or so: everyone who refers to internet piracy as theft is doing a disservice to the argument. They can call it immoral, dangerous, or harmful, but it to equate it with theft is just not accurate.

The people who most frequently refer to internet piracy as theft/stealing are the ones who want to censor the internet and pay off congress. I hope that, regardless of where they stand on the piracy issue, HN users can be a little more articulate about why piracy is or is not permissible and stop referring to it inaccurately.

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Oh please, I actually find it rather convenient. I know I don't have to take anybody who equates copyright violation with theft seriously. Anyone who uses deceitful propaganda and newspeak to hide the truth is obviously not interested in a serious discussion about piracy and copyright law, but is only looking to demonize their opponents to further their own cause. It's like religious fundamentalists that equate homosexuality with child abuse.

It's far more than just being semantically "inaccurate". Anyone who equates piracy with theft is being deliberately and fundamentally dishonest, and is only interested in waving their propaganda about instead of having an open debate.

"It's far more than just being semantically "inaccurate". Anyone who equates piracy with theft is being deliberately and fundamentally dishonest, and is only interested in waving their propaganda about instead of having an open debate."

That's just not true. If you asked a random person "what do you call the act of taking something without paying for it", they'd answer "theft". The fact that there is a distinction, because in one case you're "physically" taking something and in another you're not, is a much more nuanced argument.

Most people will use the term theft because that's the term which fits the best in our language. You might not like that, you might want to change that in order to help people understand the difference. But that doesn't mean that anyone who uses the word "theft" is someone to ignore.

> That's just not true. If you asked a random person "what do you call the act of taking something without paying for it", they'd answer "theft".

By saying "taking" you've already given them the wrong question.

If you ask a random person "what do you call the act of imitating something without paying for it", they'd answer "huh?", or "art".

You're absolutely right. But I made that mistake without even thinking. This is how most people work - we don't think long and hard about each word that we use, and we use (often leaky) abstractions and analogies.

This just reinforces my point - choosing to ignore people only because they use the word "stealing" is not a good idea.

Really? I'm starting to feel the opposite: that these arguments by definition are getting tedious and deliberately miss the point. In much the same vein as the "marriage is only between a man and woman" variety.

The English verb "to steal" is certainly capable of meaning "to take without the right" regardless of whether physical property is involved. Not to mention the myriad of common idioms, like "So-and-so stole my idea." What else are people trying to express by its use in this case?

It's clear that the issue here is their legal right to exclusive distribution and transmission (or "state granted monopoly", if you prefer) of their work, not whether or not they "still have a copy". It can be disagreed with, but they have it and others distributing their work without permission diminishes it.

Not saying I disagree with you that it's the wrong way to go about things, but, I think if one is being honest, the argument over the use of word is telling on both sides and that some people are clearly trying to demonize those who use the word, in the same way that they feel they are being demonized by its use against them.

Yes, both sides are playing with semantics and what's more important is that, like a lot of questions of law breaking this boils down to question of rights and doing something which you clearly have no right to. Im not supporting the recording industry in any way but nobody has the rights to intrude upon someone else's, be it a recording company, and if you dont like the way they do things you have the right to refrain from doing business with them, not pirate their stuff.

'Theft' and 'non-theft' are bad words to use.

Of course piracy is like theft in one way (you get something for free without compensating the author), however its not in another (unlike smashing a window and taking a diamond ring, nobody loses a diamond ring - or a window).

Theft - you take something from someone. Result: You have something, someone else does not have that same thing which you just took from them. That is called theft.

Piracy/Copyright-infrigiment - you copy something from someone. Result: You both have that same thing, in digital world, it is exactly to the bit the same. In analog world the someone has the original while your copy will probably be a bit different and unique. Nobody is left without having stuff.

We could use a little chart:

  before | after
  -------+------
  X   .  | .   X    Theft
  X   .  | .   .    Vandalism
  X   .  | X   X    Copyright infringement

These are clearly different things. It becomes outright quaint when you look at it using the third basic law of human stupidity[1]. According to this law (and assuming a naïve interpretation of the chart above), theft is criminal, vandalism is stupid, but copyright infringement is smart.

[1]: http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/stupidity/basic.htm

The whole debate about stealing is irrelevant, and not very interesting.

1) The way that the internet is configured means that distribution is now nearly free for everyone.

2) People will (and are!) using this to distribute things that other people don't want them to distribute, and may even bankrupt them.

3) Changing this, if even possible, will require fundamentally changing the nature of the internet in it's current form, which will have massive implications for freedom of speech and may bankrupt other industries.

#3 is the only part which is truly interesting. Are we going to break what we have now based on the (possibly incorrect) assumption that it will do anything to help the recording industry?

Copying under the current system is guaranteed... that's what it does. Whether it's "stealing" or "moral" is something else. Whether people go to heaven or hell when they download Season 4 of Sex in the City, or whether their government locks up children from copying a ringtone... These are less interesting points. Societies can take care of themselves on these points, I presume they won't tolerate it.

> The whole debate about stealing is irrelevant, and not very interesting.

Uninteresting, yes. Irrelevant, sadly no. We give words meaning, which tend to linger even when used differently. A careless (or careful!) choice of word can significantly steer the debate. Think for instance of "viral" licences (as if the GPL were a disease), or "mentally ill", which reminds us that mad people aren't mad by choice.

I don't get one thing with internet culture not refering to intelectual property as a real property and its theft as not a real theft.

If copyright theft was not theft, the whole GNU and Free Software movement wouldn't exist. As author of software licenced under GNU GPL, you say "this is free, but because I am the author and I have copyright, if you want to use it in your software, you must also release the code under GNU."

If you say copyright theft is not theft, any software company can go and use GNU code, include it in their proprietary code and re-sell it. And because you also imply that we should give up on copyright enforcement, they would get away with it.

Because you can't really own an idea 100%. That's why "intellectual property" is a misnomer, and it's not actual property. And that's why there are time limits for patents and there "used to be" time limits for copyright, too, which now are pretty much gone, thanks to Disney and others.

I'm not saying copyright violation is not illegal. I'm just saying it's not theft. It's a different crime, with different characteristics, defined in a different section of the US code.

Same goes for the intellectual "property" rights. Mixing together three completely different areas of law (copyright, patents and trademarks) is bad enough; implying they are related to physical property rights is unforgivable: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

If I build a factory at great personal cost, but the materials and electricity to produce the goods cost next to nothing, is it theft if people take these goods without my permission? I don't see the difference between this and intellectual property.

You say it is not accurate but don't provide anything substantial to back up your claim. Instead you use a logical fallacy: because these persons are bad, thus the argument of using term "theft" is bad.

When someone takes your factory and materials and electricity, you don't have them any more.

You missed his argument. What is it when someone steals his (extremely cheap to produce) goods?

It's theft but extremely cheap is not the same as free.

When someone takes his goods, he doesn't have them any more.

It's not like he was trying to collect them, he was trying to sell them. This person took them without paying.

What if someone figures out how to make a similar factory very cheaply, and drives you out of business by only charging their marginal production costs for their widgets? The important difference, I think, is that they're using their own materials and electricity to make their goods, but people who engage in copyright infringement are too.

EDIT: And I'd note that many would would say that this second person is "Stealing the customers" of the first factory owner, but that doesn't mean what he does is actually morally equivalent to stealing.

If they make their own factory then that is ok. Simple capitalism. That is not my point, however. If they use the original factory without paying that is not ok.

So then, by your logic, walking up to a record store, and sneaking out with a cd that you did not pay for, is not theft then.

That's clearly theft. The record store had a CD, and then you took it.

But what's that got to do with copyright infringement?

Why are people suddenly embracing this argument that piracy isn't theft?

People work to create music just like people work to mine the earth to produce coal. Should one not get paid just because what they're producing can't be physically held?

Because it isn't theft. There is no argument-- it simply isn't. When a user downloads a file, that file then exists in one more place. It is copied.

That may be immoral, but it is not theft.

Well then I guess the question boils down to 'Do we support morality or do we support loopholes?'

Why is it a loophole? At no point does using correct verbiage affect the argument at all. The same action is still occurring. The debate should not be "is copyright infringement stealing?", the debate should be "is copyright infringement wrong?"

And there are people using the term "steal" to carry that moral weigth into the true debate of "is copyright infringement wrong?".

If someone sincerely believes that piracy is theft, then they should simply demand that piracy be equated to theft at all level. This would then imply that piracy would be dealt as any other theft is dealt.

This would involve the owner making a police report about this theft, and state machinery getting search warrant to find the "stolen" article. Once the stolen article is found, it will be "replaced" back to the owner.

This would then be also beneficial to defendant, because now he would have the right to lawyer, and if he is unable to get one, the state will provide one. He would also have presumption of innocence, and if found guilty, his punishment would be jail time. If there is fine, it would have to be proportional to the "theft", and not some $250,000 for immeasurable damage.

Very likely, three strike laws and such would also apply, which ensures that anyone committing "theft" repeatedly will most probably see long sentences.

Why have different laws on book, if piracy is theft and can be dealt as such? And what about all the expiration of ownership? My great-grandfather's ring is still with me, and its ownership did not expire 70 years after his death. Perhaps all literature should still be owned by the estate of the dead, after all, it is property that is being stolen in plain sight everyday.

You know, there used to be a SHAME associated with shoplifting. One had to have the friggin balls, and take considerable risk to go through such an endeavor. No, BUT NOW, as long as we can hide behind our frikken computers, with absolutely no risk, we start grabbing whatever we want now, don't we? And no, that's not theft, oh no no no. I now have a fond new found respect for shoplifters. At least they have true grit, and don't delude themselves by calling it anything other than stealing.

We're talking about a simple legal definition here - copyright infringement is using some kind of intellectual property without the proper license to do so, while theft is depriving somebody of their property.

This isn't an argument about what's morally right - all that is being argued is that no legal system in the world classes copyright infringement as stealing.

There are even more angles to it. Sometimes piracy works as advertisement, and sometimes it works like shareware: pirate it, like it, pay for it.

So what? That doesn't make it theft, any more than it makes it murder or rape.

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