On Fri, 15 May 2009 12:01:18 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Fri, 15 May 2009 09:56:27 -0600, somebody wrote:
> 
>> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
>> news:4a0d8dea$1@news.povray.org...
>> 
>>> As Darren says, copyright != ownership.
>> 
>> Ownership of *what*? One can certainly own the copyright, patent,
>> trademark, banana, boat... etc. Boat != ownership, people own boats.
>> 
>>> It's the right to control who is permitted to legally copy a work.
>> 
>> And that right *belongs* to ...
> 
> Rights belong to the owner, but the legal term for violating the rights
> is not "theft".  It's "infringement":
> 
> "2) in the law of patents (protected inventions) and copyrights
> (protected writings or graphics), the improper use of a patent, writing,
> graphic or trademark without permission, without notice, and especially
> without contracting for payment of a royalty."
> 
> (First definition has to do with trespassing)

Compare to the legal definition of "theft":

"the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and 
fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or 
consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including 
potential sale)."

As you've said, you can't steal rights.  But "Intellectual Property" is a 
collection of rights - copyright, industrial design rights, etc.  You can 
infringe rights, but you can't steal them (not in the same sense that you 
can steal a car - you could arguably use fraud to transfer the rights to 
you, but copying something like a music CD doesn't transfer the artist's/
label's rights to you, it infringes on their rights.)

Where the record labels, MPAA, etc get into "stealing" is not the 
stealing of the work, but they contend that every time someone infringes 
their copyright, they are denied profits (ie, the profits are stolen).

In order for that argument to hold water, you have to assume that 
everyone who infringes the copyright of the rights holder would have paid 
for the product, otherwise there's no theft of profits (since there would 
have been no purchase made without the infringement).

Going after casual downloaders assumes that all of those downloaders 
would have paid for the content.  Many wouldn't have, for any number of 
reasons.  So while copyright infringement occurs in those cases, theft 
does not - and wouldn't be unless the companies could prove that the 
infringer would have purchased the content if they had not been able to 
copy it.

Then there's also the question of downloading content that you have paid 
for.  For example, if one downloads an AVI file of a TV program that you 
have paid for (say, for example, because you subscribe to cable TV), is 
there infringement or the loss of profits that would constitute theft?  
Suppose one has the legal right to record a program (and that was 
established in the famous Sony case back when VCRs first came out), so I 
set up a recording on my DVR and the recording is interrupted by a power 
outage, or is truncated because the DVR records all but the last of 5 
minutes of the program due to a programming change that isn't reflected 
in the schedule?

Or suppose one purchases an LP that contains a song and they want to 
listen to it in my car.  They've already paid for the content.  They 
could record the playback of the LP (and indeed many people did that when 
cassette players were put in car stereos).  Or they could download the 
song (since someone else has already done the work of ripping it).  Or 
they could ask a friend with the right equipment if they would record it 
for them.

Jim

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