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Comment by lazyfanatic42 | Hacker News Reader

Copying isn't theft.

If copying isn’t theft then I guess we can stop worrying about open source licensing. Anyone, including corporations, would be able to take open source code and copy it into their own products, reselling it without consent or releasing their changes because they haven’t stolen anything, just copied it, right?

If you spend years of your life writing some software and then it accidentally gets revealed to the world by mistake, anyone can copy it and use it as their own? Because copying isn’t theft, theft they haven’t stolen anything from you, so you have nothing to complain about?

I can't tell if you're sarcastically describing the world we live in or if you genuinely haven't realized all these things happen regularly. Poe's law I guess.

It isn't sarcastic. Copyleft depends on copyright law.

It does not qualify as the legal offence of "theft" in many courtrooms. It may be theft in colloquial English.

A pretty big part of theft is the victim no longer having whatever is stolen. When I steal your car, phone, bike or milk, you no longer have it, and no longer enjoy the benefit of it. I'm fairly certain that's the part of theft most people have a problem with. If I zap your car and produce a perfect duplicate, and drive that duplicate away, leaving your car as if nothing had ever happened, other than minutiae like the VINs and licence plates being identical, I cannot imagine anyone having a problem with that. Nobody is going to call that theft. If you still believe that's theft, then I cannot understand where you're coming from.

This does not hold true for copyright infringement. When I copy Die Hard 3: The Expendables' Return of the Jedi, the original owner/copyright holder still has it. As they still have it, I have not deprived them of their work or good, and calling it theft makes about as much sense as me making a copy of the milk in your fridge and taking that copy.

It's not worth the effort. Anyone pretending not to understand the distinction is being deliberately obtuse.

I should really be able to recognise that by now. This is exactly the kind of discussion that has burned me out on using certain platforms before.

Thanks for putting it in plain text.

Nah, the people who pretend that definitions in a criminal law book override natural linguistics are being deliberately obtuse. Language exists mostly outside of a courtroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0

This wild misrepresentation of the argument proves my point.

> A pretty big part of theft is the victim no longer having whatever is stolen.

No, colloquial English doesn't require this. e.g. "Identity theft"

Given that identity fraud leads directly into what is functionally actual theft (taking money out of you bank account or taking up loans in your name and scarpering), there's no wonder the term's confused. Doesn't make it theft though.

It isn't legally theft, but because people commonly use the word that way, it is colloquially theft. The qualifications are different. Legal crimes are defined by law. English is defined by its common use. They're not necessarily the same thing.

Just as many wiki's are called Wikipedias, by analogy with the biggest ones; that is, they aren't. Or maybe more fitting here, the word 'download', which can mean data transfer or modification in pretty much any way with a person not knowledgeable about computers.[1] Those uses aren't uncommon, but they are nevertheless wrong.

I think you just finished a circle there, so I don't think there's much reason to continue this line of enquiry, given neither of us is going to change our stance.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/download#Verb

Good. Bacteria have the right idea about plasmid-swapping. Information is meant to be collective.

Of course, if you give people fewer incentives to share their information they can and often will simply keep it private. You can't copy information that people never gave to you, regardless of the law.

Make industrial espionage legally forgivable, but only if it is shared to the public.

"they haven’t stolen anything from you" correct by the legal definition as my non lawyer brain reads it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/theft

"so you have nothing to complain about" incorrect. Copyright infringement is it's own crime with it's own penalities.

The terminology section of this Wikipedia article is quite informative on why copying is not theft according to the US Supreme Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

A big difference in theft vs copyright infringement is if you go to jail or not (criminal vs civil). Again, not a lawyer.

Yes this would be one of many consequences of a world where copyright was actually killed or seriously ganked.

Preventing someone from getting value out of their work is theft - not matter how it is done. Copying a dead person's work isn't theft because a dead person can't create value, but stealing a dead person's car is still theft, because something of value is gone.

Stealing a car you were never going to buy and making an exact replica of a car you were never going to buy is two entirely different things.

> Preventing someone from getting value out of their work is theft

No, it's not. You (or random large media corps) do not get to unilaterally redefine words of the English language like that.

Pass whatever laws you want about it, enforce them however you feel is appropriate, but don't try to redefine language itself to push your agenda.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/theft

"IP theft" is not counter to that definition. Intellectual property is a 'something'. That definition, does not require depriving someone else of something. As another valid example, see "identity theft".

Furthermore, English is not prescriptive; dictionaries are a lagging reference of observed use... so yes, the users of English absolutely do get to redefine language. That's how all modern English words originated.

And finally, if your dictionary doesn't account for "IP theft", you have simply found an incorrect dictionary, because that usage is undeniably widespread -- whether or not you agree with the concept politically.

> Intellectual property is a 'something'.

Good thing I don't recognise the existence of that. We live in a society that does, and I despise that. At least the EU has the sense to not recognise software patents, so 'intellectual property' is not all-encompassing. Maybe one day they can loosen the grip further.

> As another valid example, see "identity theft".

'Identity fraud' is a much better term for what this is. Someone using my name, phone number and my mother's maiden name to get money in my name is not stealing my name and phone number; it's just fraud. It's much closer to lying than stealing.

English is how people use English words. You can not like it, but that is simply your opinion.

Never said it was anything but.

"IP theft" is a contradiction.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intellectual_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/theft

Between these two pages, you should be able to understand why "ip theft" is a bogus term. It's specifically called out in the intellectual property article.

"Unlike other forms of property, intellectual property can be used by infinitely many people without depriving the original owner of the use of their property."

Whereas theft has this definition: "Theft is the taking of another person’s personal property with the intent of depriving that person of the use of their property."

My not-a-lawyer understanding is that we use a common law system in the USA. This means that the definitions for things are based on history, previous cases, and the statutes that have been codified into law. This is a good thing because redefining words can make previously legal actions become illegal. Allowing that to happen at the pace slang develops in the modern era means we will hold people to different standards based on how "hip" they are.

In a court of law, yes. In colloquial English (as cited in the general English-language dictionary above), no, the use is much more broad.

I said you don’t get to redefine what words mean unilaterally. I disagree that enough English speakers agree with the MPA definition for us to adopt it. I sure don’t.

English is not a programming language. You're only disagreeing with my articulation here, which is irrelevant in relation to the thing of the matter - namely what I mean rather than what I type into the keyboard physically.

Ways to prevent someone from extracting value out of their work that are clearly not theft:

- murder

- kidnapping

- ddosing their site so they can't sell things

- carpet bombing their reviews with 1 star

- filing an injunction blocking the sale of their product on bogus ip claims (aka copyright trolling)

- gaslighting them to the point where they think the idea is worthless

- being the owner of IP that prevents them from selling their IP

Probably others but I think that's enough to show your definition is wrong.

All theft is preventing people from getting value out of their work, but not all preventing people from getting value out of their work is theft.

I'm not trying to make a definition, just trying to convey my opinion. I suggest we discuss our opinions rather than trying to codify English

Well, 'theft' is more of an artistic licence.

It's a breach of intellectual property rights owner.

Down the rabbit hole we go.

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