Re: when in doubt wipe it out
On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 05:53:33PM -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
> Dave Sherohman wrote:
> >I believe his point was that copyright violation is not theft.
>
> I believe he is wrong, in the USA, at least. You might investigate the
> DMCA. AIUI, copyright violation has been moved from being a tort to
> being a crime.
>
> >(While copyright violation may arguably prevent you from receiving profit
> >that would have come from a sale, it does not take anything from you
> >that you already possessed.)
>
> Read the DMCA.
I have looked up a copy of HR2281 (aka the DMCA) at
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=105_cong_bills&docid=f:h2281enr.txt.pdf
and a search of it verifies that the word "theft" does not appear in
the text of the Act. (Nor does the word "steal". I couldn't think of
any other good synonyms to try.)
Yes, copyright infringement is illegal. Yes, it does fall under
criminal law as of the passage of the DMCA. But it is not theft. It is
a different crime.
--
Windows Vista must be the first OS in history to have error codes for things
like "display quality too high"
- Peter Gutmann, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection"
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
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