@ vacri:
The jaywalking analogy does kind of work… but to extend it, we now see the pedestrian crossing industry bodies equating jaywalking with carjacking; after all, they both disrupt the traffic, so they must be pretty much the same thing.

As I see it, there’s a handful of fundamental conflicts in this debate, and none of them are really deeply related to the definition of ‘theft’ vs ‘copyright infringement’

First, selling copies for any great price is a business model on its last legs because copies are no longer scarce in any meaningful sense. The record labels and big business attached to music are built on top of distribution and marketing (which used to be incredibly expensive, and hence required such a company) but now distribution is effectively free and marketing can happen, if the music is good, almost without any further effort.

New business models are starting to emerge – donation driven, ad supported, or using the downloads as advertising for the things that really are scarce – concert tickets, merchandise, physical media etc. but the record labels can see themselves being made unnecessary, so they rail against the changing world. I think they’ve had their day and need to adapt or die.

Secondly, copyright has gone far beyond its original intent – the idea was to offer creators a limited monopoly so that the public domain would be enriched by their work after the copyright term was up. Now the terms are so long that almost nothing that came out in your life will be in the public domain before you die. Every so often some profitable work gets dangerously close to becoming public property and the industry lobbies for a retroactive extension.

The system is broken, it no longer serves its intended purpose, it only serves the copyright holders (allowing them to continue collecting money for work that was done many decades ago, something no other industry gets to do). I think it needs to be reformed; make copyright terms much shorter, maybe make copyright non-transferable (allow them to be licensed, but not sold) so that the big businesses can’t own music or other works in perpetuity.

Third, social opinion (or at least, what we can surmise about opinion by behaviour) is in tension with the law. People want to be allowed to make copies of media they own and share them with others, they want to watch media in the manner they choose (device shifting and the like… protected by fair use in some places but forbidden in others) and they don’t want to be hamstrung by restrictions placed by the copyright holder. The law is supposed to be a reflection of the society it governs, so that tension can’t last forever and the law can’t win in the face of adverse public opinion. Sooner or later it’ll have to change.

I may have gone off on one a bit there… /longpost

Brit raises a valid point I think. Although the difference between someone not paying for a software product, and someone getting in your car because you are going their way anyway is that you can kick that person out of your car. The govt can send you to jail for not paying taxes (see Mr. Capone)

Software and softdata (like music) falls into its own category. At the end of the day the fact is that if you dont want to pay for it, you going to get it cracked somehow and use it for free.

The best you can do is let users use the software for 30 days or so, and then popup messages all the time asking them register (and pay) for the software. Maybe disable a few features.

Then they can use the software in its diminished state, or get it cracked, or pay for it.

Here in South Africa there is a company that goes around and makes sure businesses are using software that is paid for and licensed. They dont do it to personal users though, just businesses, as they can be fined and have assets taken away, etc. (BSA)

When I write software to sell, I make sure that it needs to be registered and that the client pays for it. If someone else gets a hold of it, then they going to need someone to crack it, and good luck to them.

Saying that piracy isn’t theft because otherwise it’d just be called theft is a poor argument. Using the same argument, burglary, fraud, and robbery aren’t theft.

I’m kinda in the middle on the piracy issue. I’m in the pirate-a-bit, buy-a-bit category. I think those who say there’s nothing wrong with getting free content and never paying for it are scabs. These people love saying ‘information wants to be free’ when it comes to other people’s work, but strangely don’t say the same thing when it comes to their bank details, social security numbers and so forth. If info really wants to be free, then it’ll be okay to forward contact details and lists of downloaded media to DRM lawyers, right?

What I really wanted to say though was that I came up with an analogy the other day. Piracy is like jaywalking. Jaywalking is something everyone does. A single instance doesn’t really hurt anyone, and traffic isn’t really affected. But as jaywalking increases, traffic is more and more affected until it comes to a standstill. Like piracy, you’ll never stop jaywalking, but it can be reduced by making it more convenient for people to cross the road legally. It’s not a perfect analogy and isn’t meant to be a direct piece-by-piece comparison, but there are curious similarities.

Ultimately the semantics are just that. The fundamentals are about creators being remunerated for their work, and users exchanging something of value in return for their entertainment (which they clearly value). Doesn’t matter what you call it. Invent a new word if you have to, but don’t forget the first principles are what it’s really about.

The problem I have is that the “piracy isn’t theft” people are almost always the exact same people who want to argue that “piracy is perfectly okay”. For example: http://i.justrealized.com/media/2008/08/piracy-is-not-theft-handy-guid e.jpg

See? Piracy isn’t theft. Apparently, it’s not even copyright infringement. It’s “copying” or “sharing”. Personally, I think piracy is a lesser crime than shoplifting (because shoplifting does remove the original). My attitudes towards people who pirate varies depending on their situation. I know people that are poor students. They’re struggling to make ends meet, and are taking out loans. While I still don’t condone piracy in their case, when they pirate, I think of it as a lesser crime than when people with money pirate. I know pirates that have plenty of money, but they pirate because piracy costs them nothing – which means they can keep their money for high-end computers and other expensive things. I see them as a worse than poor people who pirate.

In the modern world, piracy is easy and you almost certainly won’t get caught. Once you remove the moral boundary (as the “piracy isn’t theft” people want to do), then essentially, piracy is just another method of distribution. For them, buying a game looks like this:
Amazon.com: $50
BestBuy: $50
Piracy: $0

Of course you’re going to go with the cheapest alternative. In this view, paying is just a donation. The use of the word “theft” is to create some level of resistance to the idea of piracy. “Copyright Infringement” just doesn’t have much of a punch to it. Even further, people can’t relate to being on the bad end of “copyright infringement”, but they can understand being on the bad end of theft. Personally, I think that people who justify piracy should, logically, justify a whole bunch of other bad behaviors:
– If no one is living in a house, pirates think that they should be able to live there for free (no rent) as long as they don’t damage the house.
– They don’t think they should have to pay taxes (it wasn’t the government’s money to begin with; the taxes are the “real theft”).
– They should be allowed to park in pay parking lots or at meters for free.
– They think they should be allowed into concerts and amusement parks for free. (“Hey, maybe they’ll buy something when they’re inside, or recommend it to friends.”)
– They should be allowed to ride in other people’s cars for free. (“Hey, you were headed my way.”)
– They should get free cable TV and free satellite TV, with access to 100% of the channels.
etc, etc.

In some ways, pirates can be viewed as people who don’t pay their taxes. Taxes go to produce a lot of things for the community. If they’re not paying taxes, but you are, then you’re paying so other people enjoy the benefits of your tax dollars. Same thing with piracy: if people aren’t contributing (when they would’ve bought something) then I (the copyright-respecting consumer) am propping up the companies that is creating the products that benefit us all. It’s unfair that pirates aren’t contributing, and that the costs fall on those of us who respect copyright.

“every person who speeds should be charged with premeditated vehicular manslaughter because”

You know what? I’d be down with that if they raised the fucking speed limits so I didn’t HAVE TO SPEED FUCK!

The following is quoted from me on Slashdot on one of the countless discussions that deteriorated into debating different definitions. It got moderated to +5 Insightful too, because Slashdot likes to argue about copyright and I was arguing against the unpopular side :mrgreen:

It’s mostly the same argument as you make here; copyright infringement is not theft, they’re two distinct and different things that the law is against and conflating the two only serves the purposes of the copyright holders, not the purpose of unbiased discussion.

The important point for me is that, given that they are two different things, you can debate whether one ought to be legalised without implying that you want to legalise the other. If copyright infringement were simply “theft” then changing the laws surrounding copyright would have to impact on the legal definition of theft too, which would be absurd.

Copyright infringement is a distinct thing from theft. They are two separately defined legal terms, plain and simple, not the same thing. They are both illegal. They are not the same crime.

The ethics of whether copyright law should be changed or abolished, whether infringement should be made legal (and hence would no longer be “infringing”) and whether illegal copyright infringement can be right or moral are all entirely separate issues. The only thing I’m saying here is that “Theft” and “Copyright Infringement” are two clear and distinct terms with different meanings under the law. There is no reason whatsoever to conflate them, and pretend they mean exactly the same thing.

Well, not quite true – there is one reason, and as far as I can see it’s the only reason, and that’s because “Pirates are stealing our music” has more emotional impact then “Our copyright is being infringed”. The whole “you wouldn’t steal a…” campaign, for example, relies on erasing the difference in people’s minds between theft and infringement, to make them feel bad about something they may otherwise have been doing without thinking about it. This doesn’t change the legal side of things, only peoples’ perceptions, but perceptions can be powerful. The industry are using that to their advantage and I for one don’t like their way of doing it, so I’ll insist on correct use of the terminology.

You could even draw parallels with Orwell (although doing so feels cliched) – the ‘Newspeak’ idea revolved around removing words with similar meanings so that varied and nuanced ideas would be collapsed into a single concept. All forms of political dissent, freedom fighting and the like would be lumped together with terrorism and criminality, under the label “thoughtcrime”, making the not-so-bad sound as bad as the very worst. Putting theft and copyright infringement together under “stealing” is the same – suddenly infringement sounds just as bad as theft because you’re calling both of them stealing.

Legally speaking, they’re separate, and whether infringement is as morally bad as theft or not is a side issue to be determined separately (and personally) but if we let them convince us that they’re just the same thing then the debate will be over without it ever having taken place.

I couldn’t find any mention of the term “piracy” in any of the laws we have about copyright infringement.

I’m not familiar with the US laws, but in here a theft without aggravating circumstances can be punished by up to 3 years of jail and 45k€ fine, while reproducing any intellectual work without holding the rights to do so is also punishable by up to 3 years of jail and 300k€ fine.

You also risk a 3750€ fine if you circumvent by any means a technical measure meant to protect a software, 6 months of jail and 30k€ fine if you provide such means.

Civil reparations cannot be lower than the actual value of the copyrighted content, so people with 3000+ mp3s, movies and games would have to pay several million euros (and the fine) if they were convicted.

I’d say copyright infringement is worse than theft in the eyes of the (french) law. Good thing judges have a little more sense than law makers.

Every time a discussion about copyright infringement comes up, a few people have to make the point that piracy involves ships. I think this argument is stupid & a waste of time.

In many languages, words can have more than one meaning. Piracy can mean boarding and hijacking ocean vessels by force for profit AND infringing the rights of copyright holders. The word has had both meanings since the 1700s, and actually preceded copyright. Many pro-copyright-reform groups have embraced the name – e.g the Pirate Party – as have US courts.

If you don’t like the term, that’s fine, call it infringement or whatever. That’s what Stallman has done with GNU/Linux and refusing to lump disparate legal theories into an “intellectual property” group. But don’t waste breath insisting that everyone else needs to follow your convention. One legitimate definition of the word piracy includes copyright infringement. Get over it.

Let’s back up a step here.

I strongly object to the term *PIRACY*!!!

I am not sailing around in a ship, flying a Jolly Roger, and doing the traditional pirate-stuff.

I would suggest a term that suggests being a proponent of a new or modern business model.

And they won’t stop at piracy: free software is the next target, for being “anti-competitive” and “anti-business”.