Piracy isn’t theft, it’s copying.

This Anti-Piracy thing is getting way out of hand in my opinion. It isnt stealing as any idiot could tell you that. We all refer to it as File-SHARING, and it dosn’t have anywhere near the impact the music and movie industries claim it does…

I remember when I was young, I would put a cassette tape into my radio and just record any song that was playing on the air. I was also able to put 2 tapes into a dual cassette recorder and record any make copies of everything I owned and give them to friends for free. There’s no difference but back then nobody had a problem with it. The music industry didn’t collapse back then, and it’s not collapsing right now.

I also remember when I was able to put a tape into my VCR and record any movie from television or from any rental store. Nobody had a problem with that either.

Why is it that now that it’s digital everyone seems to think it’s thievery to steal when while it was all analog nobody had a problem? People need to open their eyes and look at things like this or else it’s gonna be super big brother everywhere.

File-Sharing Doesn’t Equal to Stealing

Op-ed law professor Stuart Green was talking in the press about unauthorized file-sharing and why it couldn’t be considered an act of theft as the international corporations believed.

Since infamous Napster emerged in 1999, file-sharing started growing in popularity directly proportional with the evolution of technology, in our case – P2P. After this, the creative industry had to invest outstanding amounts of money in order to persuade people into thinking that unauthorized downloading is theft. In other words, they equal content theft to stealing. But not everyone can agree with this opinion. For example, Rutgers’ law professor and expert on theft laws shares another point of view. He says that if a file-sharer illegally downloads someone’s track from the web, in most cases, the creator hasn’t lost anything.

Of course, you might try to argue that those who use intellectual property without paying money for it do steal the money that they would have owed if they bought it legally. However, two basic problems can be seen with this contention. First of all, nobody ordinarily can know whether the downloader would have paid the price if he didn’t misappropriate the property. So the argument assumes the conclusion that has long been argued for – that it’s real theft.

Meanwhile, the entertainment industry in cooperation with the CCI (Center for Copyright Information) continues arguing that piracy is damaging the economy of the United States with up to $58 billion annually. As a result, online “theft” costs the US about 373,000 lost jobs. Actually, this particular kind of thinking gave birth to such legislation as Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Hopefully, everyone who has the least bit of common sense makes all they can to not let this two proposed bills pass. Indeed, this far, SOPA could be considered dead and buried, while ACTA is still waiting to pass the European Court of Justice.

Stuart Green suggested to use words like “unauthorized use”, “trespass”, “conversion”, or “misappropriation” instead of “stealing” and “theft”, because they describe the situation more precisely. Most industry experts agree with him, pointing out that piracy is not stealing, but only copying.

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