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Whoops, forgot to provide a link <http://www.netjus.org/pages/giurisprudenzax.asp?a rticle=12link>, and to muse some more.

One could argue that the only "theft" here is being committed by the RIAA and other media conglomerates. Perpetual copyright extension means that copyrighted information never enters the public domain, thereby depriving the public of it!

Not to mention the fact that not a single dime of the money from these court cases has reached the hands of the artists whose interests the RIAA so altruisticly protects.

how's that for legal?

Supreme Court decision

>Whining that you're a "customer" won't fly with any competent judge.

On the other hand, any competent judge will know about DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) and so won't keep calling copying information "theft" and "stealing".

>they're teaching kids that stealing is wrong.

Not stealing, infringing copy rights. Take it up with the liberal hippies in the Supreme Court, because until you get a reversal from them, copy right infringement is not theft.

> Why are they always suing in civil proceedings rather than prosecuting with a criminal trial?

Because - for the zillionth time - copy right infringement is not theft, and not a criminal offence. It is copy right infringement, an actionable matter carrying fixed penalties. Some associated activities are criminal: screwing with your cable connection, DMCA violations. But purely copying the data is not a criminal offence.

Is that enough italics, or do we need to go over this again?

>There may still be many lines of code that were stolen from SCO Unix.

For the zillionth but I'm sure not the last time, according to the US Supreme Court, copyright infringement is not theft.

Copy right violation is not theft. You can be jailed for stealing one CD from a store. You cannot be jailed for copying every track in the RIAA's catalogue and then giving a copy to every human on the planet earth. Please don't spread the RIAA's FUD.

Your statements are an example of an argument about an arcane detail of the precise legal meaning of words.

Surprise, that's what law is. The words used in lawmaking are always carefully chosen to give a precise legal definition. In this case, words have been chosen to specifically differentiate between copyright and property ownership. In the same vein, different words exist in the law to describe the situations where these properties have been illegally used or taken. The Supreme Court has ruled that, "The history of the criminal infringement provisions of the Copyright Act indicates that Congress had no intention to reach copyright infringement when it enacted 2134[, the law against interstate transport of stolen goods]." From this link conveniently 'stolen' from a sibling post.

Copy right infringement is not theft. See U.S. Supreme Court, DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985)

Let's keep our terms straight. It's copy right infringement. It's unauthorised duplication. That's actionable in a civil suit. But it's not theft, and it's not stealing, and it's not criminally actionable (unless you fall foul of the DMCA, but that's a seperate issue).

Whether [unauthorised copying is] stealing or not, is a matter of semantics

It's a matter of Supreme Court case law precedent.

Copyright infringement is not theft. Take it up with the Supreme Court.

Copyright infringement is not theft. See U.S. Supreme Court, DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985)

Those wacky Supreme Court judges and their never never land.