Ranting to /dev/null

Ryan, I understand your dislike for the recording industry's stagnant approach to technology, as well as their draconian enforcement methods, but I've yet to hear you give any moral reason why copyright infringement should be allowed (i.e. I understand, and generally agree with you on the RIAA's practical stupidity, but I'm not sure I follow you philosophically). Piracy does seem to be a form of theft, and theft is clearly a sin. I've been whittling down my music collection for a while now, buying albums for things I intend to keep and deleting the stuff I don't want, and my grounds for this is basically that, as much as I hate the rich bastards that feed off the artists over this stuff, they're still within their rights to charge me for it.

In this court case, it seems Ms. Thomas was, in fact, quite obviously guilty of what the RIAA claimed (you know enough about IP addresses and routers to agree with me there, I imagine), and ended up being forced to pay the fine for what she did. While this doesn't go anywhere near excusing the RIAA for prosecuting children and people who don't own computers (which they've certainly done), they do seem entirely within their right on this case.

Yeah, the answer is that piracy isn't theft, because copyright isn't property. The fact that the law treats it as something like property doesn't make it that way.

I've been doing a lot of research into the origin and development of copyright for class, and copyright cartel rhetoric notwithstanding, it's never been about property. Copyright was developed by monopolistic printers as a trade regulation and adopted by the English crown as a method of press control. The first full legal recognition of copyright was by Mary I of England, who recognized it in an effort to suppress the printing and distribution of Protestant texts, which were interfering with her efforts to return England to Catholicism.

Piracy is not and has never been theft.

I am not seeking to antagonize you. I sincerely want to know your thoughts.

"Copyright was developed by monopolistic printers as a trade regulation..." etc.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

In other words, notwithstanding the development of copyrights, our founders thought it important to have this clause in the Constitution. By this clause, would not piracy be considered theft?

Carl

Carl: No. Consider patents, the other legal fiction contained in the constitutional clause you've quoted. The deal with patents is that you agree to make your invention public, and in exchange you get twenty-one years head start in trying to sell it. If I violate your patent, I haven't stolen from you, because you already published your idea.

The same applies with copyright. The deal between the public and the author is that in exchange for making his writing public, we'll give him a bit of a head start in trying to get commercial value out of it. Infringing upon that head start isn't theft, because he's already given the information to the public. He certainly has a remedy for infringement, but not for theft.

The term "legal fiction" above is not pejorative. It just means something that only exists in the contemplation of the law. Corporations are legal fictions, and no one has any serious problems with them. Copyright is a legal fiction. Taking an author's unpublished manuscript and publishing it without his permission would indeed be stealing, but it wouldn't be a violation of copyright (at least not historically; the current statute is a bit conflicted about that) because it hadn't been published, and copyright per se only protects published works.

By that token, I am opposed to leaking movies, albums, books, whatever before they are officially published. That is indeed stealing. The creator gets to decide when and if to publish, and taking that away from him is inexcusable. This isn't piracy. It's just theft.