[onlawschool]

Well put... I like the way you frame the argument around the concept of ownership.

However, we can't conflate access to another's property and the deprivation of that property. If I walk on my neighbor's lawn without his permission, I am accessing his property but not depriving him of ownership. Similarly, If I misappropriate someone's copyright, I am accessing his property but not depriving him of ownership.

In each case, the owner's rights are being invaded, but the owner is not deprived of ownership.

Perhaps this explains the problem analogizing copyright infringement to theft. It doesn't quite fit. Theft necessarily deprives the owner of his property, copyright infringement does not.

Therefore, a more appropriate analogy in the law might be to trespass. If someone trespasses on my property, they violate my right to exclude other's access to such property without stealing it. The same can be said for misappropriation of intellectual property.

[csallen]

I think we have to be careful with using the term "property". People are very familiar with the concept of property. So when they hear that word in the context of this debate, they (understandably but mistakenly) assume the copyright makes artistic works the "property" of the author. From there, one automatically begins to draw analogies to stealing, etc. However, none of these terms are in keeping with copyright law, because copyright law is not about property. The law is very careful to draw a distinction. Here's the correct terminology:

- Copyright law provides authors a financial monopoly. It gives them exclusive rights as to how a work may be sold, displayed publicly, or performed publicly. It does not make that work the "property" of the author. - Copyrighted material is known as "infringing material", which is not the same as stolen goods. - Violators are said to have "misappropriated" a copyright, or to have "infringed" upon the province of a copyright, thus committing "copyright infringement". This is not the equivalent of piracy.

Even trespassing doesn't seem like a valid analogy. But I would argue that we don't really need to analogize. Why not just look at the law for what it is?

The point is incentive authors to create new works by granting them a financial monopoly on their works, but to protect public interests and the freedom of speech, information, and ideas by making this monopoly limited in time and scope. It wasn't designed to prevent people from accessing an author's work. It was to prevent them from profiting off of it.

[damoncali]

Perhaps simpler: If you make something and I take it without permission, I'm a dick. Going around being a dick is bad karma. Morally, we should all strive to not be dicks.

[csallen]

  > Perhaps simpler: If you make something and I take it
    without permission, I'm a dick.

Yes, I agree. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright law.

[damoncali]

If you record a song, and I copy it to my hard drive without permission, I'm a dick. Same same.

[csallen]

Your reasoning is too simple. It doesn't have enough rules to reflect the complex nature of reality:

- If I breathe, and you grow a plant that utilizes the carbon dioxide from my breath without my permission, are you a dick?

- If I go to the park, make a snowman, and leave, and you use the snow to build an igloo, are you a dick?

- If I'm singing a song in a subway, and you're also in the subway, and your tape recorder picks up a faint echo in the background from a mile away, are you dick if you keep the recording?

- If we live in a hunter gatherer society, and I create the idea to build a house, and you take my idea and build a house on your land, too, are you a dick?