[smt88]

If that's true, there's also no such thing as "stealing" at all.

Consider a novelist who works for 10 years on her novel. A hacker steals the document from her computer and publishes it online under his own name. He makes $100M.

Is it wrong for the novelist to feel like someone stole from her? What word would you use instead?

[AnthonyMouse]

How are people still arguing about this?

Saying that someone is "stealing" when they infringe copyright is like saying someone is "killing you" when they present convincing arguments against your cause. It isn't literally stealing or killing, it's an exaggeration made for emphasis.

The reason there is so much contention is that a) the same language has been extremely common among hysterical content industry lobbyists who insist that it is literally stealing, and b) stealing and copyright infringement are both unlawful (and therefore more easily confused) even though there remains a meaningful distinction between stealing and copying.

But that distinction is very important in practice because we can't treat stealing and infringement the same. If you don't like someone's speech you can't be allowed to steal any of their webservers but you have to be allowed to copy some of their work in order to effectively criticize them.

[jsizz]

> What word would you use instead?

Infringing. (duh)

[smt88]

I can't tell if you're joking, but "infringe" means "to violate" which implies that there is a law or agreement that's being broken. That makes it sound like you agree with the idea that this is stealing.

[jsizz]

I absolutely do not agree with the idea that this is stealing. How can it be stealing, when the owner still has the thing that was supposedly stolen?

Different circumstances, different terminology. The correct terminology (see US Title 17 or CDPA 1988) is "infringing". Anyone who insists on using the word "stolen" is signalling their ignorance of the first, most basic fact of copyright law.

[smt88]

In my example, the specific crime may not have been stealing, but there was revenue stolen.

[dsp1234]

but there was revenue stolen.

1.) If the item is being given away for free, there can still be infringement.

2.) If a person would never purchase an item at the available price (due to the law of supply and demand for example), that person might still infringe. No revenue was lost or gained since the transaction would never have completed at the existing price.

In either of those cases, no revenue was "stolen", but infringement still occurred. These are some of the many reasons that stealing isn't a good way to describe copyright infringement.

[mc808]

So it is "stealing" to produce a superior, cheaper, but otherwise virtually identical product or service that sells better and displaces a competitor's revenue? Strange, I thought that was the whole basis of market economics.

[rustynails]

The revenue was lost. Look at legal web sites. There is a specific vocabulary. The language you are using is from what I call "Mcadonalds Journalism" sites who have a vested interest in vilifying anyone who infringes. By politicising the language, these sites use emotive language to sway your views. I'm sure these are articles on this. It's similar to yellow journalism.

[PeterisP]

There are all kinds of violations that are not stealing.

If I point a gun to your face and take your money, that's a law being broken, but taking that money is not stealing, it's robbery.

If I threaten to expose some dirty secrets and demand money or things from you, that's blackmail but not stealing.

If I take your textual content and re-publish it under my own name, then that's an infringing use but again, not stealing.

[lordCarbonFiber]

The law you're looking for is ~copyright~. The fact that the work isn't actually stolen is the keystone in how you can take the copyright case to trial. It's pretty hard to prove infringement if you have no record of the original work (ie it's been stolen).

[gtremper]

Stealing means the victim doesn't have the stolen item anymore.

[anonyfox]

The book has not yet been published, so this is stealing. But once you put up something in the internet, it is officially available to everyone. Doing stuff with public information is fine IMO. Same as analyzing tweet data (tweets are public).

[smt88]

What if the book has been published in paper form? The book is public as long as you pay for it.

Since internet isn't free, you're still paying for content. At what point are you paying "enough" that the information isn't public anymore?

Are you saying no one should monetize their content using ads unless they're willing to allow anyone else to do that as well?

[aaronwall]

It is worth pointing out just how pissed off Google engineers were publicly when they felt Bing was copying their search results.

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses...

http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-...