What is theft / larceny if not an abstract definition of ownership? How does theft work in cultures where ownership doesn't exist?

Isn't ownership a government-granted privilege as well then?

So if piracy is simply the act of ignoring sovereign privilege in open water (sea, space, internet), then I think the only contention one could make that piracy != theft is by asserting that piracy is not only theft.

IMHO the defining part of theft / larceny is that the original owner can no longer use the thing that was stolen.

It’s hard to ignore the intuitive meaning of stealing an idea, as in stealing the benefit

People also say that someone stole their heart, but it does not mean that they have a gaping hole in their chest. Casual use of a language for narrative purposes is one thing, speaking about actual criminal activity another.

To be clear, I make some money on my IP (being a self-published author who sells his books) and I encountered people pirating scanned copies of my work. I do not mind on this scale, but I am aware that if someone just started publishing my books commercially and I had no copyright to protect me, I would be in trouble.

But it still wouldn't be theft, rather a foul kind of "competition". My physical books wouldn't disappear from my (rented) garage and readers who like me would still hopefully buy them directly on my e-shop.

The most sold book in the world, by a large margin, for a long long time, is The Bible. If genetic historians and biblical scholars succeed, perhaps someday the unknown decedents of the unknown authors and other known valid holders of IP rights, such as the decedents of Moses and brothers, sisters and cousins of Jesus, could one day be fairly compensated. But it would end up being everyone alive, so we should do that, fairly compensate all the IP holders for the unpaid use of all that IP, including all the movies and TV shows, and including all interest accrued across the centuries, and literally everyone will get rich off the proceeds of past, current and future Bible sales. Crazy idea, but it just might work.

Thank you.

And it's strange, in that you could become relevant and have your audience expanded by the infringers hand.

Question there is how to benefit from that...

Then you'd have to sue your business competitors if they manage to capture a part of your market. After all you've been deprived by them of the benefit of getting money from that part of the market.

This is basically how it works

This meaning of stealing relies on creating artificial scarcity. It doesn't seem that intuitive.

This definition is almost explicitly crafted to make IP seem worthless.

Information that requires investment to gain is considered valuable. This argument is basically "any job that isn't physical manufacturing should not be paid, since the ideas only spread instead of move."

Oh you spent $500m developing a novel cognitive treatment for ptsd and proving it works better than sota? Humanity thanks you! Enjoy your total loss."

Oh you wrote a book? Hopefully it wasn't a book on business building, since you'll be earning nothing for your effort.

Oh you're a consultant? How charitable of you!

You seem to lack the simplest terms when talking of IP laws. Copyright is something you infringe. You don't even say what you are referring to here by talking of "IP". The important stuff is always in details.

There's a large amount of misinformation and people lacking an understanding on the differences between copyright, patents and trademarks. Making these threads repetitive to read. Always such a pointless anecdotes such as yours, truncating all IP systems under "IP laws".

For example. The patent system came to existence to ensure that inventions were not hidden, but published to the public in a form patent. Instead of the inventor hiding the invention, the society grants the inventor sole rights to the invention thanks to them making it public.

Copyright and Trademark are different beasts to Patents, and all these are very linked to the laws of single countries, bar signed treaties. Please distinguish what you are talking about. Otherwise your point is moot.

We see this opinion on HN frequently yet various legal systems recognize the concept of theft of nontangible services (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services).

One wonders if the HN readers denying the concept of IP also support copying GPL code without adherence to the GPL. It would be logically consistent.

Saying theft and copyright violation are different morally is not suporting copyright violation. It is to ask as the difficulty of copying wanes, perhaps it is time to rebalance giving up the right to copy in exchange for more innovation. When the right to copy was traded in exchange to protect publishers, it was a lot harder to copy stuff, so relatively less was sacrificed. Now copying things is super easy and crucial to normal work flows.

And yet taking a snap of a museum artifact still is quite distinct from stealing someones pen.

I do not deny the concept of IP (if it is me who you were addressing; see my other comments), but I believe that sloppy nomenclature leads to sloppy thinking.

Fraud vs. theft vs. copyright violation vs. insider trading etc. are all different categories of illegal activity and we shouldn't mix them up by using their names interchangeably.

I admit that as a maths major, I tend to be pedantic about definitions, at least in things as serious as crime.

There is a moral dimension as well. I do not believe that we should cut punishments for theft in half. But I do believe we could well cut copyright protection periods back to the levels where they were in 1960 without causing any major problems or undue hardship to anyone.

Correct. Ownership is a legal concept.

Possession exists in a physical sense, but ownership does not.

> Piracy is legally similar to a non-organized blacksmith setting up shop in a city where every blacksmith must be member of a certain guild to work.

No. It’s legally similar to a blacksmith copying another blacksmith’s designs and putting his trademark mark on their products. IP laws do not inherently restrict anyone from freely practicing their trade nor do they force you to join any trade/industry associations.

> IP laws do not inherently restrict anyone from freely practicing their trade nor do they force you to join any trade/industry associations.

While true, it's a gray area when you get into certain industries. Cell phones, for example, are chock-full of cross licensed patents regarding the baseband chips and radio waves. There's a term in the industry for these kinds of patents (my mind is blanking). Ignoring the necessary industry talent, there's no way in hell one can make a new baseband processor without dozens of NDAs and patents that you yourself can offer up as leverage.

IMHO (and one many here share), IP laws (with regard to software) have gone way too far. The big problem is that the companies with the might to enact change tend to be part of the problem themselves.

How is this any different than saying "Cell phones are too complicated so lets just skip all that research for practical reasons?"

I agree that many patents are held by groups that don't use them how we'd like them to, but they still had to _buy_ the patent. Society promised them that the patent would be enforced and it is. Combating abuse of the courts is a separate matter.

Forging a trademark is bad because it's a deception, not a theft. Trademarks have nothing do do with piracy, they're about counterfeiting.

It's not forging. It's putting your own.

You spend twenty years designing the perfect steel production method, spending millions of dollars, and start selling it as Pessimizer Steel. It's obviously superior. You start making some of your money back. I spend an hour watching you through the window and start selling it as Super Steel and claiming that it's just as good because I made it the same way. I sell it at half price because I'm not paying off any business loans. You go bankrupt.

That's the system you want? Who is going to invest in steel research in that system?

That's not an argument about forging trademarks - it's an argument for respecting patents (if the Pessimizer manufacturers got one) or trade secrets (if they didn't).

You can make an argument for trademark law on the basis of sunk costs to develop an intangible brand with intrinsic value, as opposed to as a consumer protection mechanism, but this isn't that.

There was no mention of forging at all until you brought it up. Where did that come from?

"Similar" isn't "the same", but "similar".

In one case, you forbid everyone but the licensees to produce a certain type of nails. In another case, you forbid everyone but the guild members to produce nails at all.

Both are government-granted monopolies.