Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Telaneo 219 days ago
A pretty big part of theft is the victim no longer having whatever is stolen. When I steal your car, phone, bike or milk, you no longer have it, and no longer enjoy the benefit of it. I'm fairly certain that's the part of theft most people have a problem with. If I zap your car and produce a perfect duplicate, and drive that duplicate away, leaving your car as if nothing had ever happened, other than minutiae like the VINs and licence plates being identical, I cannot imagine anyone having a problem with that. Nobody is going to call that theft. If you still believe that's theft, then I cannot understand where you're coming from.

This does not hold true for copyright infringement. When I copy Die Hard 3: The Expendables' Return of the Jedi, the original owner/copyright holder still has it. As they still have it, I have not deprived them of their work or good, and calling it theft makes about as much sense as me making a copy of the milk in your fridge and taking that copy.
2 comments
hamdingers 219 days ago
It's not worth the effort. Anyone pretending not to understand the distinction is being deliberately obtuse.
link
Telaneo 219 days ago
I should really be able to recognise that by now. This is exactly the kind of discussion that has burned me out on using certain platforms before.

Thanks for putting it in plain text.

link
kube-system 219 days ago
Nah, the people who pretend that definitions in a criminal law book override natural linguistics are being deliberately obtuse. Language exists mostly outside of a courtroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0

link
hamdingers 218 days ago
This wild misrepresentation of the argument proves my point.
link
kube-system 219 days ago
> A pretty big part of theft is the victim no longer having whatever is stolen.

No, colloquial English doesn't require this. e.g. "Identity theft"

link
Telaneo 219 days ago
Given that identity fraud leads directly into what is functionally actual theft (taking money out of you bank account or taking up loans in your name and scarpering), there's no wonder the term's confused. Doesn't make it theft though.
link
kube-system 219 days ago
It isn't legally theft, but because people commonly use the word that way, it is colloquially theft. The qualifications are different. Legal crimes are defined by law. English is defined by its common use. They're not necessarily the same thing.
link
Telaneo 219 days ago
Just as many wiki's are called Wikipedias, by analogy with the biggest ones; that is, they aren't. Or maybe more fitting here, the word 'download', which can mean data transfer or modification in pretty much any way with a person not knowledgeable about computers.[1] Those uses aren't uncommon, but they are nevertheless wrong.

I think you just finished a circle there, so I don't think there's much reason to continue this line of enquiry, given neither of us is going to change our stance.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/download#Verb

link