| BenKenobi88 said: Yeah, you can't as easily call it stealing, but IT IS. Listen, I do it too, but that doesn't mean it's not stealing. Just because it's not as bad to you as stealing a CD, you're getting the same music WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT. I think a lot of downloaders have deluded themselves into completely believing that there is nothing wrong with taking things that cost money without paying for them. |
While I don't disagree that it is illegal (depending on where you live in the world), it clearly is not stealing. This is even recognised by US and numorous other countries laws. In the US, stealing is a criminal offense, however, copyright infrigement is a civil offense (so you can't serve jail time). The whole reason copyright law exists is because the laws for stealing were insufficent and did not cover copyright infringement related offenses.
Most people use a car example, but usually don't explain it very well so I'll try and do better. If you have a ferrari, and I come around and duplicate it by building my own parts entirely, I have commited the exact same offense as copying a cd (plus I've probably commited patent infringement too in this case), yet, have I stolen the ferrari from you or anyone else? The design of the car is covered by copyright, and by duplicating the car I have infringed on this.
In regards to cost, this has little to do with legality and is primarily an argument in regards to the length of copyright, market sustainability, etc and is beyond the scope of this thread.
