Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by AnthonyMouse 3883 days ago
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.