On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:56:01 -0500, Clyde Wrinkle wrote: > "Ignoramus23193" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Here's another great article on the subject, coming from LA Times >> (hardly a bastion of extremism). >> >> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey18feb18,0,6023873,print.story >> >> From the Los Angeles Times >> OPINION DAILY >> File ~sharing~ or ~stealing~? >> The semantic debate over whether copyright infringement is theft. By >> Jon Healey >> >> February 18, 2008 >> >> A few days ago I came across an Op-Ed submission that called for file >> sharing to be decriminalized. The editors here decided not to run it, >> but it intrigued me for a couple of reasons. First, the author, Karl >> Sigfrid, is a member of the Swedish Parliament from the Moderate party >> ~ a pro-business party that's akin to this country's Libertarians >> (except in Sweden they're more than just a fringe group). Second, >> although he covered much of the same ground earlier this year in a >> Swedish paper, Sigfrid's new piece added another provocative >> contention: that unauthorized downloading isn't actually theft. Here's >> an excerpt:
<SNIP> > > > And your example basically says that pirating movies/music is wrong and > illegal but it leads to debate. Perhaps in your zeal to defend your > piracy and theft you missed this part? > > [quote] > So what's the right metaphor? Unauthorized downloading may not be > larceny, but it still seems to fit under the broad notion of theft. Even > though the copies cost nothing to produce, the data in them has value. > Downloaders acquire that value without paying for it. Some say they're > not causing any real losses because they buy new copies of the > downloaded files they like. But that rationalization wasn't persuasive > to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who flatly declared in his > concurring opinion in MGM vs. Grokster, "Deliberate unlawful copying is > no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft." On the other hand, we have the majority opinion of the USSC in Dowling v The United States: <http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&court=US&case=/us/473/207.html> ...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. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
