I don't understand why people keep saying it isn't stealing. According to Merriam-Webster:
Definition of STEAL
transitive verb
1a : to take or appropriate without right or leave
and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
and
Definition of APPROPRIATE
transitive verb
3 : to take or make use of without authority or right
Why do opponents of IP rights keep saying it isn't stealing? There's nothing in the definition of stealing that says you have to physically remove something from the possession of the owner/creator of the thing being stolen. You just have to make use of it without the authority or right to do so.
I don't think the dictionary is a very useful authority, here. Dictionaries are reactionary -- they document what words we use. They don't create words. We do that.
(Patent|Copyright|IP) infringement is an old issue, yes, and perhaps in the established context of one business copying and selling the work of another, it's a near neighbor to theft. But this world of free, crowd-sourced torrents . . . this is a new thing. The laws and dictionaries haven't caught up. We are having the conversations now that will BECOME laws and will UPDATE dictionaries.
Whether you think infringement of this sort is bad or okay, it is a very fair point to say that it is not the same as stealing. It isn't. It is a fundamentally different act, and how bad it is is something we should discuss independently. It would be unfair to import the negative rhetorical weight of the word theft -- an act that can directly impoverish or even imperil someone -- with what we're talking about. And likewise, if we decide infringement isn't so bad, it would be unfair to carry those emotions over to how we feel about physical theft.
I wish we had a catchy term for it. Freeling or "copying" or something. I don't know. I'm not sure exactly how in favor it of I am, either. But I do think it makes a lot of sense to use a separate term to discuss a genuinely new issue, so we can do so in neutral emotional territory and evaluate it on its own merits.
> I don't think the dictionary is a very useful authority, here. Dictionaries are reactionary -- they document what words we use. They don't create words. We do that.
That is a very insightful comment, perhaps obvious in this particular case, but people often argue semantics over dictionary definitions, which is often unrelated to the true issue at hand.
>Why do opponents of IP rights keep saying it isn't stealing? //
Because we're looking at the legal definitions of theft (for which stealing is a synonym) in various jurisdictions as opposed to the Merriam-Webster definition.
In my current jurisdiction the Theft Act 1968 Section 1(1) defines theft/stealing thus:
"A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly."
In legal matters it's preferably to be precise so you can be more certain what the exact ramifications are.
In any case the man-in-the-street, I warrant, would remark that stealing someone's property meant you had taken it away. For example, you steal my car. No one without an axe to grind is going to say that I still have access to and full unrestricted use of a car if you've stolen it.
I've read caselaw where the key element as to whether theft had occurred was whether the goods were carried off. If you attempt to steal something but don't actually end up denying the owner of their goods (eg you drop it before leaving the premises) then you've not stolen anything and the charges are lessened [if not negated].
Reading California state law, http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen..., it's clear that US states apply a similar test of whether goods are "taken" (stolen, taken and carried off) in order to describe an action as theft.
The most general interpretation of that definition doesn't seem to match common usage of "steal". If I use your pen without permission, but without taking it, you're going to confuse a lot of people if you claim I stole it.
Secondly, there's a difference between what's being argued here and the common "copying isn't theft". Notch is pointing out that patent infringement doesn't even always involve copying. Sometimes it's just rediscovery.
Another example: if an “identity thief” appropriates your personal information, you’re still the same person—your identity wasn’t stolen, it was infringed.
Another example: if an “identity thief” appropriates your personal information, you’re still the same person—your identity wasn’t stolen, it was infringed.
Just to go off on a tangent for a moment, this is another reframing of a crime that bothers me. There were already laws on the books against "identity theft" long before it happened: it's called fraud. So why does identity theft exist? Because banks and creditors and government agencies are constantly trying to reduce cost, they don't want to have to track down the person who defrauded them, that costs money. Instead, they put the burden of proof on you, and now it's your mess to clean up.
This prompts an interesting question: Is identity theft the act of procuring personal information without permission, or is it the act of using this information to misrepresent your identity? Is it both, necessarily? What if you don't harm the victim in any way? And what part of this constitutes actual theft? To the person, it certainly _feels_ like a part of him was stolen and used without permission.
Having published creative works on the Internet myself, I certainly understand why so many content creators try to prevent unauthorized copying. You really do feel vulnerable. Something you're very proud of has been shared with the world, and now it's in some seedy part of the Internet, with forum dwellers making fun of it.
I've noticed that as social creatures, we're unable to have empathy for corporations. There's nobody to feel guilty towards when you download that copy of Autodesk Maya. I don't think our brains are designed for it. We like individuals and small businesses because we can fit a picture of the actual people inside our heads. We feel guilty when we infringe upon their copyrights, because we know it might actually hurt them personally.
Most illegal acts can be boiled down to emotional damage. As pointed out elsewhere in this post, the right to property is an abstract concept. You _decided_ to hold onto that object, and you're unwilling to part with it. It doesn't seem abstract, because it's something our brains instinctively do, but it has no root in physical reality.
Why is murder a crime? Supernatural beliefs aside, the victim most certainly doesn't care anymore, because he's dead. As we all know, the problem is the emotional and financial damage to the people left behind. Prison sentences serve to control this damage.
Can a large corporation feel emotional damage? Should these laws apply if there is no emotional hurt? Everyone can see that a large company like Adobe is nowhere near going bankrupt, and their employees are most certainly not hurting because of piracy. Adobe has money coming out of its rear end.
Perhaps our laws should offer less protection if you're big and strong. Vast swaths of the world's population are happily breaking copyright law, and _not_ feeling guilty about it. Some shades of gray are clearly missing here.
Arguably the identity part modifies the type of theft, as in "theft using your identity". They take your money, or your credit, and use your identity to do so.
Either way I think that one is arguable. Can you still enjoy free use of your identity once it's been used in this way. Remember in this that your "identity" is not your real identity attached to your person it's your identifying details as used by banks and such.
Stealing usually has the undertone that this is a zero-sum game. You have something, I steal it, you don't have it any more. The operative word is "take" and it implies the removal of a thing from the sphere of influence of its owner into the sphere of influence of the stealer.
The thing need not be directly physical. You can steal money from someone and spend it without ever seeing a paper dollar.
Your definition would have me stealing a wall of a public building when I drop trou to urinate on it. That's one way to make use of it.
We have different words with different meanings for a reason. That's why we object to adding "unauthorized copying" to the definition of stealing.
"Nothing of value was lost", only perhaps "potential value". If it couldn't be copied, it could potentially be worth $0 to the copier/market. That's what makes copying distinct from stealing and interesting from a moral point of view.
Because that's not most people's understanding of theft - even other dictionaries seem to leave out the "make use of" side of it.
In the case of patents in particular, where the "thief" may have genuinely had the idea independently, it seems only a quirk of the law that they don't have the "authority or right" to make use of their idea just because someone else had it first.
Surely we should be allowed to take whichever definition best matches the intended meaning. The fact that there are other definitions that do not suit our purposes should have no bearing on the "correctness" of our language.
An example. If someone takes issue with me saying that a soldier was "pinned down", I might defend my use of the idiom by saying that they were unable to move because of enemy fire. The question, "Why do you pick that particular definition, when the term can also mean 'fixed in place with literal pins'?" seems a little silly.
If I lure some customers away from my competitor by offering a superior product at a lower price then my competitor might complain that I "stole" them. They might say
A: Stealing is wrong
B: You stole my customers
Therefore:
C: What you did was wrong
but due to the fuzziness of English words A and B don't actually imply C, since they used "steal" in different senses.
I think a far better word for these discussions is "trespass" as in "he trespassed on my patent/copyright/trademark". I think this has the advantage of being closer to literally true in a legal sense, more in line with what our moral intuition ought to be about for copyright, and giving the right idea about how the law regards the acts (copyright and trespass can be crimes if done in certain ways, but are usually just torts).
Laws are not about dictionary definitions or personal interpretation. They are a formal specification and that formality is what we call "legalese".
I'm not a lawyer, so I would probably mess up the explanation, but fortunately I saved the link to it, so you can read it straight from the lawyer who explained it right here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696526
When people call copyright/patent infringement "stealing" or "theft" they usually don't mean to invoke the legal definitions of those words. The fact that this conversation occurs so often should make it clear that there are a number of people whose personal idiomatic definitions of those words include "illegal getting-of-things".
People are entitled to their personal definitions, and the fact that the legal definition is different is immaterial. When a reckless driver crashes their car into a kid, the kid's mum calls the driver a "murderer", and we don't consider them "wrong" (because the guy's crime is actually called "vehicular manslaughter".)
Now, it's fair to argue that using these defintions of "theft" is prejudicial, and that it's also fair to argue that people should refrain from that usage to minimise ambiguity, but it's not fair to argue that they should stop using a word because it doesn't agree with some "authoritative" definition (except in legal contexts, of course.)
When people call copyright/patent infringement "stealing" or "theft" they usually don't mean to invoke the legal definitions of those words. The fact that this conversation occurs so often should make it clear that there are a number of people whose personal idiomatic definitions of those words include "illegal getting-of-things".
I think you're looking at it backwards. The fact that this conversation occurs so often makes it clear that there is quite a lot of people who are aware "theft" is an incorrect term for it.
The way I see it happen usually is that these people point out that infringement, unlike theft, doesn't take away some physical property and isn't a simple zero-sum act (as in, if I steal 10 dollars from you, you have 10 dollars less). The next thing that usually happens is that the answer is something along the lines of "but it's still wrong" and/or "you're just splitting hairs".
That's why I brought JackC's explanation into play: he explains the real difference between theft and infringement, without sliding into legalese, and he also explains why it's so important.
People are entitled to their personal definitions, and the fact that the legal definition is different is immaterial. When a reckless driver crashes their car into a kid, the kid's mum calls the driver a "murderer", and we don't consider them "wrong" (because the guy's crime is actually called "vehicular manslaughter".)
I strongly disagree with this. The reason why people protest that infringement is not the same as theft is precisely because they feel that the legal definition matters.
The people who point out difference between theft and infringement don't do so because their argument is "Infringement is not theft, so it's okay." (Or at least I don't know anyone dumb enough to try that.) They do it because they know that infringement is at the very least legally wrong and they want to get the emotional coloring of the word "theft" out of the picture, so that people can finally settle down to discuss whether the laws governing infringement need to be changed or not.
Incidentally, I believe that a lot of people would consider "the kid's mum" from your example wrong, but that doesn't mean they claim that the reckless driver is not guilty or that he should be dealt with leniently.
Now, it's fair to argue that using these defintions of "theft" is prejudicial, and that it's also fair to argue that people should refrain from that usage to minimise ambiguity, but it's not fair to argue that they should stop using a word because it doesn't agree with some "authoritative" definition (except in legal contexts, of course.)
It's not about minimizing ambiguity. It's about stopping people from misrepresenting one thing as another, so that the correct thing can be discussed. What I think is not "fair" is telling those people "Well, my definition of 'theft' encompasses 'infringement' and I don't care, because I shouldn't be held to some 'authoritative' definition."
Well, I could get into a hundred reasons, but the primary one being that I personally don't recognize any concept which attempts to frame an idea as being property. It isn't property, I can't hold on to it, I can't touch it, and I can't steal it. You don't have any right to an idea over any other human. This is an abstract construct which attempts to create an artificial commodity where there isn't one. The consequence is it restricts humanity adversely as progress is controlled by those who have the currency to file thousands of patents per year. The free world is changing from a democracy to a corporatocracy.
Speaking of which, if you still don't understand, think for a second of democracy (an idea) being patented. People couldn't vote unless they paid licence fee, and if they were accused of voting without a licence then they would be deported without a trial on suspicion alone...
It's absurd, but it's more absurd that we've been letting it happen.
Too bad it doesn't matter at all what you personally recognize. I happen to agree with you. And it does suck that reason has anything to do with this stuff. It's about money and control. This is just another example of a few people or corporate entities vacuuming up all the resources of the world. In this case they are vacuuming up raw ideas and the ability for individuals to profit from those ideas. They do this because they can. They have power and they use that power to change policy to allow them to do this. It's that simple. And it will only get "better" if it suits them. And I don't see it suiting them. Vive la revolution!
> It isn't property, I can't hold on to it, I can't touch it, and I can't steal it. You don't have any right to an idea over any other human. This is an abstract construct which attempts to create an artificial commodity where there isn't one.
Apart from "holding on to it," what you say in the quote sentence is true for pretty much any property. In a strict sense, property is what you can defend. However, in order stop people using violence to defend their property, the government steps in and defines material property and vows to defend it for you through laws about theft, etc.
So property is an abstract concept enforced by the government.
Now, the government simply looks around and says, "what else is valuable for people that we can protect for them?" One is land ownership. You can't physically be on the border of your land all the time with a gun, so the government has laws about trespassing and poaching, etc., and enforces them for you.
Money is another abstract concept the government defends. It makes things easier for everyone to have a common currency, instead of trading chickens and cows, so even though $1 doesn't have a "material" meaning, it represents value and therefore people have agreed to respect it. The government proposes a country-wide currency to replace instability of ad-hoc currencies.
Another is copyright. The government agrees that creative people deserve "ownership" over their work, so they can profit from it, and this bargain is struck in order to encourage development of culture. It's a concept of intellectual property that is simply a contract between the people and the government, and the government vows to defend it.
Another example is patents. The government wants to encourage research and development, and one way it sees to do so is to help inventors profit from their ideas by vowing to defend their rights to it for a certain amount of time.
Before you get all upset (if you're not already), I agree very, vere strongly with the position that there are clearly problems with patents--specifically that they encourage many things we find distasteful as society, and the minefield effect is terribly detrimental, especially in certain areas like computer programming. There's no question that patents are a problem today, with the pace of technological development being what it is, and it's clogging up the legal system like nothing else. These are things that need to be solved. If the solution is to abolish patents I'm not even necessarily against that, though I think I agree with Judge Posner that they make sense for certain industries.
However, the claim that patents and copyright and any intellectual property is not consistent with the idea of material property is, imho, completely false. All of these concepts share the same root, that the government vows to defend your ownership over something. Just because some property is material and other property is "intellectual" does not make the latter "abstract" and therefore invalid, because the whole concept of property is abstract, it is nothing but an agreement.
This is the role of government, really, and I'd say one of its only legitimate roles, apart from infrastructure building, is to establish agreements on what we consider property, and enforce them. Now, whether this is done well is a subject of debate, but conceptually it is self-consistent.
If you don't agree with this, feel free to grab your gun, squat somewhere with everything you own, build a wall, and try to keep everyone from taking your stuff, but otherwise you have to acknowledge that the whole concept of property itself is as intangible the idea of intellectual property.
That doesn't excuse certain aspects of intellectual property from being ill-defined or badly designed, but the concept is not invalid. The extension from material property is a logical one.
I think we should be careful about the word property. In the case of copyrighted works, you do not own the work, you own the copyright to it. In the same way with patents, you don't own the patented idea, you own the patent. Both of these are abstract constructs that means society gives you certain rights, but do not extend ownership to the ideas. This is plainly obvious with regards to copyright since the fair use clause gives anyone right to make copies under certain circumstances.
Even in the case of land ownership, one could argue that what you own is much closer to a "license to use the land surface" since you can have surface rights without having the rights to mine or drill for oil on that land.
So your idea that property comes about because government says "what else is valuable for people that we can protect for them?" I think is incorrect. Property rights aren't some God-given right, we as citizens agree to handing out the rights to pieces of the commons to individuals because there is some net gain to everyone from this. All of those "rights" you describe are therefore subject to an evaluation of whether they serve society's purpose, and I think it's pretty clear that's a discussion that is very relevant to patents and copyrights.
I agree with everything you just wrote, so if I came off as contradictory it means I wasn't clear about something. When said "government says," obviously it was a bit of hyperbole, I really meant that citizens and government agree on a set of rights, pursuant to certain goals we have as a society, and how they should be distributed. Of course there are subtleties that I tried to gloss over, such as owning a patent vs. owning an idea---I was just trying to emphasize the fact that even ownership of material property is such a right, based on agreement, and is basically already an abstract concept, and therefore consistent with other forms of ownership that may seem more abstract.
Another example is stock ownership, i.e. partial, tradeable ownership of a venture. No, you can't hold it in your hands[1], but people understand that it's property in all the relevant senses and can be meaningfully said to be "stolen" (e.g., if the votes you make with your shares are ignored).
[1] The stock certificate doesn't count; that's a representation of the property, not the property itself.
Wait, what? Most exchanges and corporations don't even go by a paper certificate, proving my point: shares (and money, for that matter), are defined by a relationship, not a physical instantiation. If you lose a certificate (if they even still issue them), there are still records of how many were issued, and of when they were transfered to you. As long as that history can be reconstructed, you are still given the voting/dividend rights, and if you aren't, it's lawsuit time.
Same thing with contracts: a contract is a relationship. The signed piece of paper is not the contract, but proof that a contract exists.
It's just a case of Procrustean bedding to act like all property (or rights bundles isomorphic thereto) must be physical.
> Most exchanges and corporations don't even go by a paper certificate,
Except the ones that do. You're right; most don't by default, but if you DO have valid paper certificate, it is a bearer instrument. Who owns it, owns it.
Which is to say, that the physical piece of paper is not a defining characteristic of property in stocks (even one case would mean that paper is not inherently part of stock ownership), just as physical stuff is not necessary in many other kinds of property.
It certainly is "a tiny piece of the company", at an appropriate level of abstraction. Expand it out to something more specific and you get that it's "right to cast a certain number of votes in determining who is allowed to manage (act as steward of) the company's assets and other major decisions, and to some proportion of the money paid out as dividends or when the company is bought out".
Somebody who owns their own company can be thought of as equivalently having 100% of its stock.
Don't see what's "a scam" about it, but I'd love to hear your thorough analysis on the matter.
