Does it though?

One could argue that even without making the copy I am depriving artists from income. Perhaps one or two of those CDs you would actually have bought yourself had you not received them from me for free.

Follow that line of thought and pretty soon no gifts could ever be exchanged as it could potentially be considered theft.

Now, what if there were a website that you could post something like: "Man, I'd really love to have that latest Rihanna CD. Here's my address." And some do-gooder would be able to send you his copy, since he doesn't want it any longer.

No copies made. No money exchanged hands. Just a gift from one fan to another.

Yet you are still depriving Rihanna her 2cts. Someone is still stealing. I mean, Rihanna is still a few cents short, isn't she?

I don't know, man. This whole thing is too grey. Far too grey to simply say that TPB is depriving income simply by providing a platform for downloading .torrent files that could potentially be used to download copyrighted materials, which could possibly sometimes deprive some artist of some income.

I don't see what is so grey about it. Regifting property to one other person without retaining it, OK. Regifting property to multiple people or while retaining it, not OK. You could argue that regifting is depriving artists, but it is terrible argument because property is generally allowed to be redistributed without the original creator's consent.

If digital files are property, why can't I resell them?

I don't see how my comment says you can't. I just don't think you can resell them to multiple people or resell them while keeping the property.

My intention was to point out a current difficulty with digital files, which is that they are legally stuck half way between property and license. You used the word property as if it was assumed, which struck me as odd, because to me they don't feel like property.

My comment was trying to point out that if we really tried to view digital files as property we get into problematic territory. For example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19842851

A lot of the language around digital rights issues seems to me to be loaded. The use of theft to refer to copyright or even the words Intellectual Property, begs the question of an argument not yet proven. Eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Intellectual_Prope...