I'm personally surprised the "copyright infringement isn't theft" meme is still going strong.
Semantics matter though when even courts start to become confused by the inexact use of terminology.
Here is a copyright infringement case that had to be taken to the US supreme court to reverse a guilty verdict for "interstate transportation of stolen property": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States
You can argue that a person might have gone to see the movie if they hadn't downloaded it, but that's kind of a dumb argument.
In this thread, we recognize the existence of supply / demand.
It is exceptionally ignorant to claim that increasing the supply of a relatively scarce thing has no economic impact on the creator / owner.
What I find really ignorant though, is you've decided that lowering demand is equivalent to theft. Does that mean competitors are "stealing" from one another.
1. Copyright shouldn't exist. 2. If copyright didn't exist, anyone would be able to get any digital file easily without restriction. 3. If you can get any digital file without restriction, then supply is infinite and demand doesn't matter. 4. If supply is infinite, then supply and demand doesn't matter and you're ignorant for trying to apply it.
That's basically the argument you're making, and you're rather trivially just assuming the consequent.
On the second part, that's just a really faulty analogy. Competitors aren't "stealing" from one another for the simple reason that they haven't taken anything. Copyright infringement isn't "stealing" demand. It's stealing an item that has demand. It's the infringement that's the theft, not the consequences. The consequences are just the justification for having the law in the first place. To repeat, competitors aren't "stealing" when they lower demand for the stupidly obvious reason that they haven't stolen anything.
Copying a file is free, it's weird to make it equivalent to theft when there is no loss on behalf of the studio. Perhaps a better example would be one friend sharing a dvd with another friend.
That's what I'm saying though, it is stupid, to call file sharing theft. Theft involves loss on behalf one party. If simply taking profit(file sharing media companies would say) is enough to count as theft, then regular competition does that.
Another analogy: suppose you had a technology where you could clone real life items, you could copy food, cars, precious metals etc. you wouldn't call that theft. However in computing that technology readily exists.
Another thing, you're conflating laws with morality, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's immoral. Copyright has been extended again and again by the Disney company afraid to lose their mouse.
And what I'm saying is that you're simply declaring by fiat that there's no loss to the studio when you copy a file they own the rights to, and from there, building up to a conclusion that there's no loss to the studio when you copy a file they own the rights to.
It's a circular argument that falls apart because I reject the premise that I suffer no loss if you infringe on my right to profit from my own creation. You're not going to be able to argue me away from that by just saying the opposite is true with no further evidence.
Again, theft isn't depriving someone of property. If I go to your house and say, "ooh, cool guitar" and you give it to me, no theft has occurred. You've been deprived of that guitar, but I had the right to take it because you gave me permission.
Theft is committing an act of taking something that you don't have the right to take. The value of that thing doesn't determine whether or not it's theft, it determines damages. Regular competition or loaning a DVD to a friend don't consititute theft because you took no action you aren't allowed to take. The law allows you to make a competing product or to loan your books and movies to a friend for personal use. That's the whole reason why we don't refer to that as stealing something.
You can't steal something if you didn't steal something, regardless of the impact your action has on someone else. But in copyright infringement, you took something. You took the exclusive right to distribute a piece of content. That is an actual thing that is recognized by law and by common everyday economics as a real thing that has value. Depriving its rightful owner of that thing can be reasonably described as theft.
I haven't mentioned morality at all. I haven't even mentioned my personal stance on what I'd like to see IP law become. The only think I'm doing is arguing against this notion that it can't possibly be considered "theft" unless there's physical piece of plastic involved.
Obviously I meant unwillingly deprived, now you're just being pedantic.
But let's make your analogy more accurate, it would be more like me walking into your house, drawing it, and reproducing it at home.
> ... The law allows you to ...
You are in fact making the claim that something is (morally) wrong or not because it is illegal.
I will explain why competition doesn't count, because even though you make less money, they aren't directly taking it from you.
If I made my livelihood by designing homes, and I was good enough at that job that people demanded my services, then yes, copying one of my designs and distributing it without my consent is stealing something from me.
And I'm not conflating morally and legality. I'm really not. The two correlate pretty highly here (as most laws do for obvious reasons), so I guess maybe that's what's confusing you. But if I write a novel, and you put the original file on bittorrent, I created all the value here. You dragging a dropping a icon representing the bits on a hard drive isn't valuable work. And I believe that morally, the nearly infinitely greater amount of productive work I did to create that copy than what you did entitles me to more creative control. I believe that completely independently of whatever the legal system says. I also know that the legal system agrees with that determination and sets penalties for violating rules set up to enforce it. But I'm not using that as evidence for my moral position. It's not immoral because its illegal. The causation goes the other way around. It's illegal because the shared ethical framework of the people and society that drafted the constitution found it immoral.
To be fair, I believe I am free in my expectations and declarations. I didn't and don't expect that however.
> right to attempt to sell your friend the file under the terms I want to set
To attempt a sale is not a right, at least not one I am familiar with.
> You dragging a dropping a icon representing the bits on a hard drive isn't valuable work.
Actually, in as much as that is included in the archival process, I disagree.
> It's illegal because the shared ethical framework of the people and society that drafted the constitution found it immoral.
Good thing Disney has nothing to do with it, otherwise copyright might stretch out to over a century.
It's called "copyright". You have the right to control distribution of your creative work. A direct and unavoidable implication of that is the right to try to sell it.
> Actually, in as much as that is included in the archival process, I disagree.
Archival doesn't produce a creative act by either common sense or legal interpretation. You can add value of course by writing backup programs or just doing the work of backing people's files up, so arguably I didn't choose my words carefully enough there. But the thing you created was the process of doing the archiving. You're entitled to control of and credit for that work, but not the actual files that your process created. Writing a program that saves the text of an ebook doesn't make me the author of the book.
> Good thing Disney has nothing to do with it, otherwise copyright might stretch out to over a century.
I completely agree, but it's irrelevant to the discussion of whether or not copyright as a concept should exist.
You may not be stealing directly from the people whose works you are entertaining yourself with, but you are stealing from the people whose works you would have otherwise bought if you didn't have this free entertainment that you consider unworthy of your purchase yet still view anyway.
If you enjoy content and declare "It isn't worth the price, and I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so what's the harm, right?" you are still satisfying your urge to be entertained. If, without this access to free, overpriced entertainment, you would have otherwise sought out and bought other entertainment that you deemed worthy of your money, you are stealing from the people offering worthy entertainment.
If someone owned a practically infinite supply of water from a spring and bottled water for $50 per 12 oz bottle, and you said, "Hey it's fine if I sneak on their land and drink from their spring, because I wouldn't pay for their water anyway, so who am I hurting, right?" regardless that there is tap water that you would have otherwise bought at $0.03 per gallon, but now have no need for.
You may not be hurting the spring owners, but you are hurting the utilities selling the tap water.
IMO, this is why entertainment mostly sucks nowadays. It's very hard to make any money in it, because people are all watching/listening to crap movies/music, turning their nose at it and refusing to pay, and then going in for a second helping. /rant