I think you understand my point. In a general sense, is doing something criminal okay if it's for self-betterment? Pirating Windows does rob Microsoft of some small portion of their rights as a creator.
Blending both concepts of copyright violation and theft together, what happens in this common situation?
1. I go to a store and buy an audio CD. I'm given the receipt.
2. My audio CD is stolen at some later date. I still have the receipt.
Is the thief guilty of copyright infringement?
Edit: as meeting this line of thought out, I realize there are 2nd hand shops that can legally sell media of all types (cd's included). How this works is the person (me) goes in with the intent to sell the disc. They give me a price, which we come to a meeting of the minds. Sale occurs based upon first-sale doctrine.
This would indicate that the proof of copyright does not exist in the receipt. So would the rightful copy retain with me if there is no meeting of the minds (theft)?
Not intending to bite your head off. :-)
A rap artist is hired by a label to create an album. Said artist later dies. The label goes bankrupt soon thereafter, or perhaps simply folds up shop and leaves the business without auctioning off its assets.
I have produced a copy of the album, which I host at my own cost from my server, once these events have transpired. There is no reasonable "victim" left for this crime of infringement, and indeed I'm helping to reduce the scarcity of this product in the world.
While somewhat contrived, this thought experiment is not particularly far off from reality.
Software companies never go out of business without selling off their assets, and it's the extreme edge-case where people continue to distribute the works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware
Illegal? Sort of. Immoral? Not really.
The victim is the artist's heirs.
I've been trying for years and I still haven't managed it!
Of course, in a lot of cases demos would work well for that, but they seem to have fallen out of favour recently.