By that argument, we should dump terms such as "copyright infringement", not the underlying concept of stealing, which is much more basic - the taking of something that is rightfully someone elses without their permission.
Cases in point:
1. If you leave money behind, you're still stealing, even though the owner did not experience a net loss of worth;
2. If you steal a physical book, you're charged with theft based on the value of the book (including the IP in it), not just the value of the pages, glue, and ink; You're not charged with two separate crimes - theft of the book (the media) and "infringement of IP";
3. If I steal your passwords, you still have them. You can even continue to use them because (being devious), I will only post as you once in a while - so you haven't lost anything. Would you say that in such a case I haven't stolen anything?
Stealing is stealing. It's simple. It's only the lawyers who make it complicated, to their exclusive benefit.
Taking something that belongs to someone else without their permission is theft. That some people (IP lawyers) have tried to change that so as to confuse the issue (and earn themselves more $$$) is beside the point.
I might have 1,000 books (okay, I have more than 1,000 books). If you take one without my permission, even if I never notice (so that I am NOT deprived of the use and enjoyment of it in any shape, manner or form) right up until the day I die, you are still a thief. It's YOUR act, not whether it results in someone experiencing a loss.
Even if I was thinking of giving away the book because, for example, I needed the space, your taking it w/o permission is still theft.
The value of the book consists of two parts - the raw materials (paper and ink and glue), and the actual "intellectual property" - the words and/or pictures. Certainly, you wouldhave to agree that two books with an identical number of pages, same quality paper, could have different values based solely on their "intellectual property" content... after all, we don't see all books the same size selling for the same price for a reason.
So, when you steal a book, you're stealing two separate things - the physical media, and the underlying IP. Now, would you try to argue that you should only be held liable for the value of the paper and ink and glue, and not the entire value of the book, including the IP? Because you WILL be held liable for the entire cost, because that is what you stole. You didn't steal just the paper and ink and glue, and "infringe" the actual IP.
Now, remove the physical media. It doesn't change the essential nature of the theft, just that you only stole the IP, not the underlying media as well. If the book (paper, glue, ink) + IP was $100, and the paper, glue and ink were evaluated at $20, stealing just the IP means you STILL stole $80 worth of goods - you didn't just "infringe" any more than you "infringed" the IP of the physical book when you stole it.
If you're talking about "property" in nature, it just 'belongs' to whoever is strongest.
And yet animals share w/o it being "strongest takes all". Otherwise, the next generation would quickly die out, and the older animals would also be left to fend for themselves. If elephants and dogs can do it, it's "natural" - not some man-made law.
And they recognize stealing, as well as "intellectual property rights" such as territories, and social hierarchies. So why the big effort to deny what even a dog understands - that rights extend beyond the mere physical act of possession?
So by acknowledging that identity theft doesn't actually deprive the person of their identity, you admit that theft does NOT require that the thief deprive the victim of something, nor do they actually have to come into possession of that same thing.
As for "valid legal comparisons" - theft is theft. That the law chooses to qualify some thefts using more specific terms - larceny, fraud, copyright infringement - doesn't change the underlying nature of the act - taking something that is not yours without the rightful owners' permission, which even a 5-year-old understands is stealing.
Theft is theft. Makes no difference whether it's title to land, your car, or software.
It makes no difference? It does to me. In the case of copyright infringement, I see no theft. You seem to be trying to state your opinion as a fact.
Nice solipsism. Seriously - Isn't that exactly what YOU are doing, stating your opinion as fact? After all, just because YOU see no theft doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Why are you trying to minimize one form of theft by denying that it actually results in loss to the party who was stolen from? [speculation] Is it too hard to just admit that you're a common thief? [/speculation].
Because really, that's what a lot of the whining comes down to. People want it for free, but don't want to admit they're thieves.
believe that property (or at least property rights) is an artificial construct created by the law.
And you're wrong. Even animals, who do not have artificial constructs such as law, recognize territorial and other "intellectual property" rights, as well as things such as unequal division of food.
Stealing is stealing - all theft involves infringing on someone else's rights. Calling stealing software "infringement" was one of the stupider things we did.
They could equate it to the theft of real property.
Your misuse of the term "real property" just makes my point - "real property" is land and the buildings thereon. I have yet to hear of anyone actually walking off with "real property."
Theft is theft. Makes no difference whether it's title to land, your car, or software.
And it's the same when you steal someone's software. Same as when you steal someone's job, or the love of their life. They didn't "own" either, but you have definitely harmed them in both cases. What would you rather call it when someone steals your job - "job infringement"? Your promotion? "promotion infringement?" With your bank account, it's not real - it's just bits in a computer. So, is someone who empties your bank account online, are they stealing from you, or are they just doing "currency infringement?"
"Infringement" is just a fancy word for stealing. Same as fraud is just a fancy word for stealing. Same as larceny. They just tell the listener more about the TYPE of theft.
For most people, "infringement" doesn't imply a real potential for economic loss - theft does. "You're infringing on my lawn - get off my lawn!" Big deal, right? There are some infringements that the public might recognize - infringing on the right to free speech being one of them - but again, this is more of a "rights as rights" and not "rights as it smacks you in the purse or wallet."
So it's more realistic, when there's money or other good and valuable consideration involved, to talk about it as theft or stealing.
People of almost all ages can relate to that, even for things they don't "own". Example - "They stole my job | promotion | wife | husband | boyfriend | girlfriend." It's only become confusing because people have labeled it "copyright infringement" instead of "theft".
Up here the ONLY questions you're asked are name and occupation, and whether you have any grounds for not being eligible for jury duty.
You're also not allowed to discuss deliberations - ever - outside the jury room, so you don't see the insanity you see in the US where jurors sell their stories to the media.
The media also cannot publish the identities of the jurors on individual cases, so jurors can make decisions free of the fear of backlash from the public if they make a decision that might be unpopular. Jurors need to be impartial, and that mean freedom from having to worry about what their neighbors, co-workers, etc., will think of a verdict.
In order for you to steal life, it must subsequently become your possession by way of theft.
Why? If I steal your time, do I come into possession of all that extra time I stole? If I steal your idea, are you deprived of it? If I steal your identity, do I actually come into possession of it, and REALLY become you, and you suddenly lack an identity? If I steal your freedom (say, through fraud, by identifying you as the criminal who did $X, when I know otherwise), do I have MORE freedom than I did before?
Of course not. Theft can encompass many things, both material and non-material. The thing is, you can STEAL anything of value to someone - not just material things.
Not necessarily - after all, if they were not going to person A, there's no guarantee they would instead be going to person B. They may be like an unused airline seat - no value to be extracted.
Look at all the case: statements in a switch - they're all GOTOs (the case: is a label). So are your virtual method tables. The break; statement also does a goto to the next instruction after the enclosing set of statements (switch, for, whatever).
So don't knock goto - the software you're using depends on it.
If eclipse is the gold standard, our standards are too low.
"Gold" is our 3rd-lowest level. Sort of like "Professional" - it's really for amateurs. You want AT LEAST Platinum. Or Onxy. Or even the craptastic Diamond level. That will give you the absolute minimum. And for our Enterprise-y customers, there's Prozilla, to Manhattan, and all the way up to Rushmore.
What do they mean? Who knows - it SOUNDS like it should cost more, and that's all that counts!
Anyone who would use Eclipse over VS just doesn't know what he is doing.
Or maybe I use linux for development? You know, like a proper geek?
What? You use eclipse when you have the awesomeness of vim available to you? (okay, I admit it - I switched to jEdit recently, but still, for a lot of code, eclipse is massive overkill).
It's nothing to do with scaling. I have my dpi set at 120 (instead of the standard 96) AND I have my browser set to zoom in an additional 40%, and it's STILL blurry. I have enough problems reading text w/o that sort of silliness.
This case is in the US. Even if you're based in the EU, if the downloader is in the US, good luck trying to get anything but actual damages, while paying for your legal costs, unless you previously registered the copyright.
friends have also told me that the quickest way to get out of jury selection is to act smart. they don't want that.
I sat as a juror in a month-long murder trial. They definitely did not want dummies to be able to weigh in all the forensic evidence, the medical testimony, the technology behind tracking by tower via the cell phone network, etc. In a difficult, complicated case, they want jurors intelligent enough to be able to wade through all the conflicting junk, discard what is irrelevant, and decide what the real facts are, and be intelligent enough to be able to actively put aside any bias that the details of the case may invoke, for or against either side.
It's the big out-in-the-open secret - everyone knows about jury nullification, but the first rule of jury nullification is you don't talk about jury nullification.
As you said - criminal responsibility vs accident. They didn't "accidentally" download the software to reverse-engineer it. If it were a case that it was accidentally downloaded and never used (eg: malware, link hijacking, etc), you might have a point.
I think the logic is they're using it so they should have paid for it so the damages are what they should have paid for it.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
So please tweet whenever you go to the bank to take out a wad of cash. After all, you would consider it fair that the maximum that someone should have to reimburse you is the amount they stole. So where's the disincentive to steal?
How about you open up a store with a big sign that says "If we catch you shoplifting you won't be prosecuted if you pay the sticker price of what you stole."
If you say "no", then I claim you're just justifying your unethical actions. You murderer.
Of course murder is stealing. It is stealing that which is most important to the other person, their very life. Their future. It's also stealing from their loved ones. Robbing them of the company of a parent, a child, a friend, a spouse, or whatever.
To the contrary, to say that murder is not stealing would be ridiculous. Go listen to any prosecutor summing up the impact of a murder on the relatives of the victim.
I wouldn't limit it to open source devs - Microsoft has produced its' share of turkeys. So has Apple (hockey puck mouse, anyone? How about the "toaster"?)
Devs can produce ok UIs provided that they follow the decades-old rule that form should follow function. But how many times have you been presented with a "finished" design that is non-functional by some "design team"?
t's impossible for copying to be stealing. The original owner is deprived of NOTHING when a copy is made.
In this case, they were deprived of the license fee. That's a tangible. They were also deprived of the ability to say "We have $X number of clients" - the more clients, the better the goodwill valuation - also a tangible asset on the bottom line.
According to your logic, I should be able to hire you to paint a house, then not pay you - after all, you are not deprived of anything you didn't have before.
Slashdot Mirror
Cases in point:
1. If you leave money behind, you're still stealing, even though the owner did not experience a net loss of worth;
2. If you steal a physical book, you're charged with theft based on the value of the book (including the IP in it), not just the value of the pages, glue, and ink; You're not charged with two separate crimes - theft of the book (the media) and "infringement of IP";
3. If I steal your passwords, you still have them. You can even continue to use them because (being devious), I will only post as you once in a while - so you haven't lost anything. Would you say that in such a case I haven't stolen anything?
Stealing is stealing. It's simple. It's only the lawyers who make it complicated, to their exclusive benefit.
Taking something that belongs to someone else without their permission is theft. That some people (IP lawyers) have tried to change that so as to confuse the issue (and earn themselves more $$$) is beside the point.
I might have 1,000 books (okay, I have more than 1,000 books). If you take one without my permission, even if I never notice (so that I am NOT deprived of the use and enjoyment of it in any shape, manner or form) right up until the day I die, you are still a thief. It's YOUR act, not whether it results in someone experiencing a loss.
Even if I was thinking of giving away the book because, for example, I needed the space, your taking it w/o permission is still theft.
The value of the book consists of two parts - the raw materials (paper and ink and glue), and the actual "intellectual property" - the words and/or pictures. Certainly, you wouldhave to agree that two books with an identical number of pages, same quality paper, could have different values based solely on their "intellectual property" content ... after all, we don't see all books the same size selling for the same price for a reason.
So, when you steal a book, you're stealing two separate things - the physical media, and the underlying IP. Now, would you try to argue that you should only be held liable for the value of the paper and ink and glue, and not the entire value of the book, including the IP? Because you WILL be held liable for the entire cost, because that is what you stole. You didn't steal just the paper and ink and glue, and "infringe" the actual IP.
Now, remove the physical media. It doesn't change the essential nature of the theft, just that you only stole the IP, not the underlying media as well. If the book (paper, glue, ink) + IP was $100, and the paper, glue and ink were evaluated at $20, stealing just the IP means you STILL stole $80 worth of goods - you didn't just "infringe" any more than you "infringed" the IP of the physical book when you stole it.
And yet animals share w/o it being "strongest takes all". Otherwise, the next generation would quickly die out, and the older animals would also be left to fend for themselves. If elephants and dogs can do it, it's "natural" - not some man-made law.
And they recognize stealing, as well as "intellectual property rights" such as territories, and social hierarchies. So why the big effort to deny what even a dog understands - that rights extend beyond the mere physical act of possession?
As for "valid legal comparisons" - theft is theft. That the law chooses to qualify some thefts using more specific terms - larceny, fraud, copyright infringement - doesn't change the underlying nature of the act - taking something that is not yours without the rightful owners' permission, which even a 5-year-old understands is stealing.
Nice solipsism. Seriously - Isn't that exactly what YOU are doing, stating your opinion as fact? After all, just because YOU see no theft doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Why are you trying to minimize one form of theft by denying that it actually results in loss to the party who was stolen from? [speculation] Is it too hard to just admit that you're a common thief? [/speculation]. Because really, that's what a lot of the whining comes down to. People want it for free, but don't want to admit they're thieves.
Stop stealing. Stop trying to argue that it isn't stealing. Simple.
And you're wrong. Even animals, who do not have artificial constructs such as law, recognize territorial and other "intellectual property" rights, as well as things such as unequal division of food.
Stealing is stealing - all theft involves infringing on someone else's rights. Calling stealing software "infringement" was one of the stupider things we did.
Your misuse of the term "real property" just makes my point - "real property" is land and the buildings thereon. I have yet to hear of anyone actually walking off with "real property."
Theft is theft. Makes no difference whether it's title to land, your car, or software.
"Infringement" is just a fancy word for stealing. Same as fraud is just a fancy word for stealing. Same as larceny. They just tell the listener more about the TYPE of theft.
So it's more realistic, when there's money or other good and valuable consideration involved, to talk about it as theft or stealing.
People of almost all ages can relate to that, even for things they don't "own". Example - "They stole my job | promotion | wife | husband | boyfriend | girlfriend." It's only become confusing because people have labeled it "copyright infringement" instead of "theft".
Up here the ONLY questions you're asked are name and occupation, and whether you have any grounds for not being eligible for jury duty.
You're also not allowed to discuss deliberations - ever - outside the jury room, so you don't see the insanity you see in the US where jurors sell their stories to the media.
The media also cannot publish the identities of the jurors on individual cases, so jurors can make decisions free of the fear of backlash from the public if they make a decision that might be unpopular. Jurors need to be impartial, and that mean freedom from having to worry about what their neighbors, co-workers, etc., will think of a verdict.
The US system, by comparison, sucks.
Why? If I steal your time, do I come into possession of all that extra time I stole? If I steal your idea, are you deprived of it? If I steal your identity, do I actually come into possession of it, and REALLY become you, and you suddenly lack an identity? If I steal your freedom (say, through fraud, by identifying you as the criminal who did $X, when I know otherwise), do I have MORE freedom than I did before?
Of course not. Theft can encompass many things, both material and non-material. The thing is, you can STEAL anything of value to someone - not just material things.
Not necessarily - after all, if they were not going to person A, there's no guarantee they would instead be going to person B. They may be like an unused airline seat - no value to be extracted.
So don't knock goto - the software you're using depends on it.
"Gold" is our 3rd-lowest level. Sort of like "Professional" - it's really for amateurs. You want AT LEAST Platinum. Or Onxy. Or even the craptastic Diamond level. That will give you the absolute minimum. And for our Enterprise-y customers, there's Prozilla, to Manhattan, and all the way up to Rushmore.
What do they mean? Who knows - it SOUNDS like it should cost more, and that's all that counts!
What? You use eclipse when you have the awesomeness of vim available to you? (okay, I admit it - I switched to jEdit recently, but still, for a lot of code, eclipse is massive overkill).
It's nothing to do with scaling. I have my dpi set at 120 (instead of the standard 96) AND I have my browser set to zoom in an additional 40%, and it's STILL blurry. I have enough problems reading text w/o that sort of silliness.
This case is in the US. Even if you're based in the EU, if the downloader is in the US, good luck trying to get anything but actual damages, while paying for your legal costs, unless you previously registered the copyright.
I sat as a juror in a month-long murder trial. They definitely did not want dummies to be able to weigh in all the forensic evidence, the medical testimony, the technology behind tracking by tower via the cell phone network, etc. In a difficult, complicated case, they want jurors intelligent enough to be able to wade through all the conflicting junk, discard what is irrelevant, and decide what the real facts are, and be intelligent enough to be able to actively put aside any bias that the details of the case may invoke, for or against either side.
It's the big out-in-the-open secret - everyone knows about jury nullification, but the first rule of jury nullification is you don't talk about jury nullification.
As you said - criminal responsibility vs accident. They didn't "accidentally" download the software to reverse-engineer it. If it were a case that it was accidentally downloaded and never used (eg: malware, link hijacking, etc), you might have a point.
So please tweet whenever you go to the bank to take out a wad of cash. After all, you would consider it fair that the maximum that someone should have to reimburse you is the amount they stole. So where's the disincentive to steal?
How about you open up a store with a big sign that says "If we catch you shoplifting you won't be prosecuted if you pay the sticker price of what you stole."
Of course murder is stealing. It is stealing that which is most important to the other person, their very life. Their future. It's also stealing from their loved ones. Robbing them of the company of a parent, a child, a friend, a spouse, or whatever.
To the contrary, to say that murder is not stealing would be ridiculous. Go listen to any prosecutor summing up the impact of a murder on the relatives of the victim.
Devs can produce ok UIs provided that they follow the decades-old rule that form should follow function. But how many times have you been presented with a "finished" design that is non-functional by some "design team"?
In this case, they were deprived of the license fee. That's a tangible. They were also deprived of the ability to say "We have $X number of clients" - the more clients, the better the goodwill valuation - also a tangible asset on the bottom line.
According to your logic, I should be able to hire you to paint a house, then not pay you - after all, you are not deprived of anything you didn't have before.