Pirates vs. America

Morrigan said:
This is moving the goalposts, though, isn't it? If Piratebay has not been found guilty by any Swedish court, then they're not breaking the law, now are they. At that point, it doesn't matter if you think that they get away with it through a loophole or if you think Swedish law is flawed. ;)
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I don't think I'm moving the goalposts. I used your exact wording, in which you claimed that The Pirate Bay can't be accused of copyright infringement. Of course they can be accused. Heck, I can accuse you of being a scaly reptilian beast from the planet Xanax ;)

In any event, I was just pointing out that, as with arguing over "theft," whether or not they are legally infringing on copyright, I think they are certainly, practically speaking, infringing on copyright, and doing so knowingly. I agree, if Sweden rules that what they are doing is legal, then that's the way it is. However, it certainly matters to me that they are facilitating copyright infringement -- and I can imagine it would matter a heck of a lot more if it were my products being distributed.

If their rationale for legality is legit, then I can't see how it wouldn't just as legitimately apply to, say, a child pornography bit torrent site. They're not hosting the child pornography, they're just facilitating its download!

Morrigan said:
I disagree. If I don't want to pay for a car (whether it's because I'm cheap or can't afford one or any other reason), will thus not buy one, and therefore steal yours, I am taking something away from you. I am removing your property from you and making it mine, and you are effectively losing your property.

On the other hand, if I don't want to pay for your music CD, I'm not going to buy it. But if I download it, you still have your music intact. I am not taking it away from you - you still have it. You didn't lose any property, not even money, because I would not have given you money anyway. You might be irritated that I am enjoying your music without having paid for it, and I could understand that, but it's not at all the same thing as theft.
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I think that's a very narrow definition of theft. If I acquire the exclusive design of the new BMW (or any other nice car) and build an exact replica myself, and sell it for my own company thus taking profits from BMW, by your reasoning, it isn't theft. BMW still has their design. They haven't technically lost anything, since they haven't yet made any profits. Similarly, if I steal someone's entire book, put my name on it, and sell it, they haven't lost anything either. They still have their book.

Morrigan said:
That's why theft and copyright infringement are two different offenses, and are treated differently.
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And I agree, legally, we should differentiate. We also differentiate between different types of theft (petty theft, embezzlement, fraud, etc.) without actually calling them theft. But I think the title is valid. If you take something without permission and without paying for it, that is a form of stealing.
 
ARubberChickenWithAPulley said:
I disagree that it's a stretch, but I am more talking about general usage of theft as opposed to legalities. I agree, from a legal standpoint copyright infringement is not theft, nor should it be. When people equate the two, however, they aren't usually talking in legalities, just in general principles. In principle, I think copyright infringement is theft. Legally, I don't think they are the same, nor do I think the ought to be the same.
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I think that on general principles, they are different and that it is not theft.

A couple examples:

Lays creates a potato chip almost identical to Pringles, in the same style packaging. Pringles drops it's patent infringement lawsuit because it cannot win (assumption). In this case, society allows a business model where companies copy each other's product, to the detriment of the original innovator.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2003-08-14-stax_x.htm

The sex shop Victor's Little Secret won a lawsuit brought by Victoria's Secret for trademark infringement. This demonstrates that our society is willing to allow similarly named businesses as part of it's model.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/04/scotus.trademark/


From Canada, but interesting. Prescription drugs now have eight years of protection. After that anyone can copy them.
http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.n...85256a5d006b97208525720b004a7124!OpenDocument


Public Domain. Disney lawyers are most famous for pushing back the time limit for copyrighted works to enter the public domain. We've extended those protections time and time again.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html

The common theme linking these examples together and to the topic at hand is that each focuses on how society will allow its business models to be structured. In each case decisions are sought that will harm or prevent harm to a business or industry. In each case certain actions that would ultimately cost a company money are made legal or illegal, yet none of these are commonly considered theft.

That copyright infringement and piracy is considered theft is a great victory for the RIAA, the ESA, and other similar groups. They've successfully got the population to frame the issue linking it to car-theft rather than the more similar issues I linked above.
 
ARubberChickenWithAPulley said:
I think that's a very narrow definition of theft. If I acquire the exclusive design of the new BMW (or any other nice car) and build an exact replica myself, and sell it for my own company thus taking profits from BMW, by your reasoning, it isn't theft. BMW still has their design. They haven't technically lost anything, since they haven't yet made any profits. Similarly, if I steal someone's entire book, put my name on it, and sell it, they haven't lost anything either. They still have their book.
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Legally, no, they're not theft. Nor are they theft in a formal (as opposed to colloquial or idiomatic) English definition of the word.

In the BMW case, you do not have any legal theft. What you do have is industrial espionage, patent infringement, and copyright infringement. If you wait a certain amount of time; then there is no patent or copyright infringement. However, taking the physical car itself is still theft no matter how long ago it was manufactured.

In the book case, if you take the physical book itself, then it's theft; regardless of how long ago the book was printed.. If you buy or download the book, then proceed to publish it under your own name, then that is copyright infringment; unless, again, a certain amount of time has elapsed, at which point it becomes perfectly legal.

That is the key difference between true theft and Intellectual Property infringement. A physical object has a value that is specific to that object. Taking it deprives the owner of that object of that object's value, regardless of the circumstances or time (ignoring degradation over time). Taking IP does not deprive the owner of the IP, since he still possesses it. Furthermore, IP only possesses, for the owner, a semi-arbitrary value -- a combination of a creator-defined arbitrary value, and a market value -- for a purely arbitrary length of time, which has varied considerably by region and over recent history.

As an aside, regarding market value. One could make the argument that the cost of many forms of IP is based far more on an owner-declared arbitrary value than on true market value; based on the level of piracy. There will, of course, always be piracy as long as it's possible to make reasonable-quality copies. However, many researchers, and even some in the entertainment media industry, claim that the arbitrary-value cost is higher than what a true market-value cost would be, and that reducing the cost to more closely coincide with actual market-value would go a long way toward reducing piracy. Since the largest part of the cost of most entertainment media is in promotion and advertising, rather than actual content, it wouldn't be that difficult to do.
 
quixotecoyote said:
I think that on general principles, they are different and that it is not theft.

A couple examples:

Lays creates a potato chip almost identical to Pringles, in the same style packaging. Pringles drops it's patent infringement lawsuit because it cannot win (assumption). In this case, society allows a business model where companies copy each other's product, to the detriment of the original innovator.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2003-08-14-stax_x.htm
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In this case, Lays created and developed their own recipe and ideas. Similar to Pringles, and no doubt inspired by Pringles success. But they didn't copy Pringles outright.

quixotecoyote said:
The sex shop Victor's Little Secret won a lawsuit brought by Victoria's Secret for trademark infringement. This demonstrates that our society is willing to allow similarly named businesses as part of it's model.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/04/scotus.trademark/
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In this case, they won because it didn't dilute the recognition of Victoria's Secret. But this more proves my point than yours: had they been identical (i.e. named their store Victoria's Secret), they would have lost.


quixotecoyote said:
From Canada, but interesting. Prescription drugs now have eight years of protection. After that anyone can copy them.
http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.n...85256a5d006b97208525720b004a7124!OpenDocument
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I believe this is the case in the US as well, only it is 20 years.


quixotecoyote said:
Public Domain. Disney lawyers are most famous for pushing back the time limit for copyrighted works to enter the public domain. We've extended those protections time and time again.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html
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No doubt, Disney has managed to extend their copyrights to practically infinity.

quixotecoyote said:
The common theme linking these examples together and to the topic at hand is that each focuses on how society will allow its business models to be structured. In each case decisions are sought that will harm or prevent harm to a business or industry. In each case certain actions that would ultimately cost a company money are made legal or illegal, yet none of these are commonly considered theft.
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This is true for a lot of things. If I take money, it's theft. If the government does it, it's taxation (I am not, lest anyone misunderstand, arguing against the government's right to tax). If I were to capture a criminal and execute him, it would be murder. If the government does it, it's justice. So yes, the government frequently weighs public good versus private rights, and by passing laws, can make things legal that, if not codified in law, would probably be looked upon negatively.

quixotecoyote said:
That copyright infringement and piracy is considered theft is a great victory for the RIAA, the ESA, and other similar groups. They've successfully got the population to frame the issue linking it to car-theft rather than the more similar issues I linked above.
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Perhaps. Or perhaps a lot of people think it is theft, without the RIAA. I am not a fan of the RIAA at all -- I think they way they have gone about this issue has been atrocious, and they shoulder a lot of responsibility themselves for treating even paying customers as if they were pirates or criminals. I am not, in any way, defending a lot of their conduct. I agree with them in principle, I have disagreed strongly with the way they've acted.
 
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No doubt there's some wiggle room in those examples.

But the point is that the legality of piracy is based on arbitrary standards rather than actual harm as in theft.

Consider the generic drug example using the theft example. If I copy your drug after you make it I've used your idea and innovation without compensating you, so that's theft. If I wait X amount of time and then use your idea and innovation without compensating you, it's not theft. Theft as a descriptor doesn't work.

Now that I think about it. I didn't even need to use the drug example. If we go back in time before the public domain deadline was lifetime + 80 years. IIRC it was originally 30 years. So if instead of stealing something immediately after production I stole it in 30 years, would it no longer be stealing?

eta: Missed this.
ARubberChickenWithAPulley said:
This is true for a lot of things. If I take money, it's theft. If the government does it, it's taxation (I am not, lest anyone misunderstand, arguing against the government's right to tax). If I were to capture a criminal and execute him, it would be murder. If the government does it, it's justice. So yes, the government frequently weighs public good versus private rights, and by passing laws, can make things legal that, if not codified in law, would probably be looked upon negatively.
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I'm not trying to compare private actions versus government actions. I'm trying to say that making piracy illegal as in the status quo is only one way of going about doing this and that if we changed the business models that we are using what you call theft now could become proper use.

Imagine a world where your image was your property. If you are a celebrity (or just pretty like me) and tabloids take your picture, they have to pay you to take your picture. After all, you worked to create your image and by copying that image for free they are stealing the results of your work. It could be called theft under the same standards people are using to call piracy theft.

Yet in America and Australia (elsewhere I do not know), this theft of image is seen as fair and reasonable behavior and not considered theft at all.
 
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luchog said:
Legally, no, they're not theft. Nor are they theft in a formal (as opposed to colloquial or idiomatic) English definition of the word.
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Indeed, you are correct, the word "theft" is incorrect. Copyright infringment does fit formal definitions of "stealing," however.

2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.


luchog said:
That is the key difference between true theft and Intellectual Property infringement. A physical object has a value that is specific to that object. Taking it deprives the owner of that object of that object's value, regardless of the circumstances or time (ignoring degradation over time). Taking IP does not deprive the owner of the IP, since he still possesses it. Furthermore, IP only possesses, for the owner, a semi-arbitrary value -- a combination of a creator-defined arbitrary value, and a market value -- for a purely arbitrary length of time, which has varied considerably by region and over recent history.
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Except all of this would rule out theft of services and identity theft. I suppose you could consider both a form of fraud rather than theft, but the word "theft" is nevertheless used for the stealing intangibles.

luchog said:
As an aside, regarding market value. One could make the argument that the cost of many forms of IP is based far more on an owner-declared arbitrary value than on true market value; based on the level of piracy. There will, of course, always be piracy as long as it's possible to make reasonable-quality copies. However, many researchers, and even some in the entertainment media industry, claim that the arbitrary-value cost is higher than what a true market-value cost would be, and that reducing the cost to more closely coincide with actual market-value would go a long way toward reducing piracy. Since the largest part of the cost of most entertainment media is in promotion and advertising, rather than actual content, it wouldn't be that difficult to do.
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I agree. Companies quote astronomical figures for their "losses," most of which seem quite unlikely. And the RIAA and MPAA could do a lot to combat piracy without suing people and shutting down web sites -- including, perhaps counterintuitively, getting rid of DRM and other such nuisances that drive people away from legitimate music sites.
 
quixotecoyote said:
But the point is that the legality of piracy is based on arbitrary standards rather than actual harm as in theft.
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I agree, which is why I think it is good that they are legally different principles.

quixotecoyote said:
Consider the generic drug example using the theft example. If I copy your drug after you make it I've used your idea and innovation without compensating you, so that's theft. If I wait X amount of time and then use your idea and innovation without compensating you, it's not theft. Theft as a descriptor doesn't work.

Now that I think about it. I didn't even need to use the drug example. If we go back in time before the public domain deadline was lifetime + 80 years. IIRC it was originally 30 years. So if instead of stealing something immediately after production I stole it in 30 years, would it no longer be stealing?
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This simply goes back to the "if the government passes a law and does it, it's okay, if I do it on my own, it's stealing" point. We (as a society) agreed on certain stipulations for the public good. One of those is patent expiration and copyright expiration. There is also taxation, and eminent domain. If the government takes money from me and gives it to someone else in the form of a welfare check, is it stealing? Well, if anyone other than the government did it, it sure would be. So yes, we do authorize "stealing" by mandating that patents and copyrights expire, just as we authorize "stealing" from my paycheck in the form of taxes for the greater good, and so forth.
 
ARubberChickenWithAPulley said:
I agree, which is why I think it is good that they are legally different principles.



This simply goes back to the "if the government passes a law and does it, it's okay, if I do it on my own, it's stealing" point. We (as a society) agreed on certain stipulations for the public good. One of those is patent expiration and copyright expiration. There is also taxation, and eminent domain. If the government takes money from me and gives it to someone else in the form of a welfare check, is it stealing? Well, if anyone other than the government did it, it sure would be. So yes, we do authorize "stealing" by mandating that patents and copyrights expire, just as we authorize "stealing" from my paycheck in the form of taxes for the greater good, and so forth.
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I truly do not understand why you are talking about the government as an actor. I'm talking about 2 hypothetical actions as a private citizen; copying immediately versus in thirty years with one considered theft and one not theft. I only brought the government into it because if the only reason it's being called theft is because it's illegal, then that's a poor application of the definition.
 
As an aside, theft of services in the sense of stealing cable or electricity is pretty concrete; you're diverting a signal with they are actively and continuously producing and charging for. If they close the spigot your flow turns off. It's close enough to a product for me to categorize similarly to.

Identity theft I'd put in a whole different category.
 
quixotecoyote said:
I truly do not understand why you are talking about the government as an actor. I'm talking about 2 hypothetical actions as a private citizen; copying immediately versus in thirty years with one considered theft and one not theft. I only brought the government into it because if the only reason it's being called theft is because it's illegal, then that's a poor application of the definition.
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You were originally talking about copyright and patent infringement, both of which are legal matters, which is why I talked about the government. If it were illegal to violate copyright after 30 years (as it is), and you did so, then yes it could be a form of theft. If it were illegal for a generic drug company to copy another company's design even after 20 years, then yes, they would be stealing. We accept both as okay usually based on their legality. In other words we (as a society) reached a consensus, through the government, that those are not forms of stealing. Ditto with taxation and welfare. One could argue that we have consented to being taxed, allowing copyright to expire, etc. therefore, based on our consent, it is not stealing.

In the case of copyright infringement, we recognize it legally as separate from theft, and rightly so. I would argue, though, that in principle, it is a form of stealing, as much as embezzlement (also distinct from theft) is.

And sorry, I didn't catch this when you added it, which is what happens when we are posting at the same time ;)
quixotecoyote said:
I'm not trying to compare private actions versus government actions. I'm trying to say that making piracy illegal as in the status quo is only one way of going about doing this and that if we changed the business models that we are using what you call theft now could become proper use.
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Fair enough. I agree, we should revise how we deal with copyright and private use of movies, software, music, etc. However, it still boils down to either the consent of the people who created the products to begin with, or the consensus of society. Barring the latter, the former has the right to decide whether or not it consents to distributing its products for free.
 
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Oliver said:
That's easy. If there were no copyright-laws in the US, it wouldn't be such an issue at all. The American copyright-holders are complaining about the Case because their Non-Swedish laws.
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Says who? You seriously think that, if all copyright laws in the United States suddenly vanished tomorrow, US media companies would suddenly stop caring about the issue? They'd be more frantic then ever -- both in the United States, and outside it. So no, I don't concede that, if copyright didn't exist in the U.S., US companies would stop trying to enforce/bolster it in places where it does exist. They might have less leverage, but they would still try.

Oliver said:
Also the US government put pressure upon the Swedish Government, as far I remember. It's all about Laws - and a fight between swedish and American/non-Swedish interests - based on laws. You're trying to tweak my nose here, aren't you? :confused:
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So? Sweden has never struck me as a country that has many qualms about brushing off the U.S. They are grown-ups who have their own laws. The case is about the Swedish police raiding a Swedish web site and a Swedish prosecutor talking about prosecuting them. Even if they did so because the US government asked them to, they are still bound to follow Swedish laws. The best the US can say is, "can you enforce your laws against the Pirate Bay?" and Sweden can either say, "Yes," or "No, they're not breaking a law." I'm still not seeing "U.S. Law" anywhere in that chain of events.

Oliver said:
I posted the quote from Wikipedia because it showed "that the Swedish police has nothing to give to the district attorney, and doesn’t have a strong case" - which contradicts with Cains Quote: "In July 2005, new anti-piracy legislation was enacted in Sweden which made the distribution of software for the purposes of copyright violation illegal". The case is still open.
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The Wikipedia entry doesn't contradict what Cains wrote. Sweden did enact new anti-piracy legislation, and they are considering even more. The Pirate Bay has argued that what it is doing is legal because they don't actually host any of the copyrighted material: they are a tracker that provides links to bittorrent files, which themselves provide a means to download files.
 
Pirate Bay isn't above the table? I thought all those fan-subbed episodes of "Death Note" I just watched were legit.
 
corplinx said:
Pirate Bay isn't above the table? I thought all those fan-subbed episodes of "Death Note" I just watched were legit.
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There's an unspoken and unwritten agreement between Japanese anime producers and anime fans in the west - if an anime is not licensed outside Japan, then it's okay to download fansub versions of that anime. After it's been licensed, it's not okay.
 
Morrigan said:
On the other hand, if I don't want to pay for your music CD, I'm not going to buy it. But if I download it, you still have your music intact. I am not taking it away from you - you still have it.
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I do not understand the logic underlying this argument.

I want to own your music. Previously I had a choice of paying for and having the CD or not having it.

Now there is a third option, downloading and not paying for the music.

You seem to be suggesting that the people who take the third option are entirely from the category who did not value the music highly enough to pay for it when the only way to get it was to pay for it, rather than from the category who actually wanted it enough to pay for it but can now get it for nothing.

That seems a very, very questionable assumption.
 
Has anybody else noticed that the companies that are most aggressive about defending their "intellectual property" are always the ones with the crappiest goods to begin with? Like Metallica all upset about pirating--who the hell would bother stealing Metallica songs? And Disney, making the same damn movie for how many decades now? Ooooh, "The Sims 2". Yeah, that's worth the effort of stealing.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Has anybody else noticed that the companies that are most aggressive about defending their "intellectual property" are always the ones with the crappiest goods to begin with? Like Metallica all upset about pirating--who the hell would bother stealing Metallica songs? And Disney, making the same damn movie for how many decades now? Ooooh, "The Sims 2". Yeah, that's worth the effort of stealing.
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I guess people must like buying crappy goods - and also stealing them.

I seem to remember a quote about not getting poor underestimating the taste of the general public....
 
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