I am not a Lawyer, nor a viewer of Law and Order, but as I understand it copyright law and infringement have grey areas, with even the Supreme Court writing “interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud.” The public seems to intrinsically understand that there is a difference as well.

My only point was only to say that this is as much of a PR war as it is a legal issue, and that conflating IP offenses and theft is making the problem worse in the public understanding, not better. Leaping to the words “theft” for every type of copyright infringement is not helping the industry. It clouds the issue and it simply doesn’t resonate with the public as well as proponents would hope. It is overused and thus people just tune it out.

My position is to fine tune the argument, as infringement itself can be a criminal act and thus doesn’t need further gravitas (hope I’m using that word correctly there). I don’t have to explain here that there are real victims of infringement, and that it has an impact on real lives. But theft and infringement, while close in meaning, are not the same thing, and you lose people by trying to make that link. I am a proponent of making the better argument by choosing you words carefully.

First, we all know that in order to legally download movies you have to pay for them. By downoading but not paying for movies you are profiting. You can’t deny it. I paid for it, you didn’t–therefore, you’re in a better financial position than the rest of us who paid for the movie. End of story. If you read the Federal Tax Code you’d be amazed at what constitutes profit.

To that point, contrary to your misconstrued perception of criminal law (likely derived solely from Law and Order), motive is irrelevant. Sure, motive helps when trying to prove that someone commited a crime. But, at the end of the day, circumstantial evidence (which is all motive is and, more often than not, is inadmissible) and criminal elements (i.e., the common law or statutory law that you must satisfy to prove that a crime has occured) are separate things. In this case, all you really need is: (1) mens rea (intent) to commit the criminal act, and (2) the criminal act. Thus, if your intent was to download a movie that you did not pay for your intent was to commit a crime. When you acted on that intent you completed the crime.

Second, by downloading the movie without paying for it you have engaged in a criminal conspiracy. The interesting thing about criminal conspiracy law is that there need not be a common intent among the co-conspirators. In fact, the co-conspirators don’t even need to know each other and, they can be guility without ever having communicated with each other. To be guilty, they simply need to have been involved in the conspiracy in some way. Accordingly, by downloading a movie that you did not pay for, you took part in a criminal conspiracy along with the guy that “made off with the goods”. Stop trying to distinguish yourself–you’re a PIRATE.

If you really want to have an opinion that holds water, you should try: (1) reading the various laws that govern this issue, and (2) going to law school so that you can understand how the laws apply (because you obviously don’t). Minds much brighter than yours (as well as those in your self-affirming chat rooms) have already wrestled with the issue and have come to one conclusion: Watching a movie without paying for it is a crime. Your very own word play cannot avoid this reality.

This is your brain on drugs. Smoking will kill you. Piracy is stealing. I really don’t see any other way of looking at it.

I created a product. It is set to be released for sale Aug. 11, and now thousands of people are watching it early and for free. How should I not feel robbed?

Of course this kind of theft is not new, it’s just evolved and grown thanks to technology. And…it’s not going to go away.

Media pirates are like garden pests. You know you cannot dispatch all the pests without inflicting some unintended damage to the entire garden. So, the goal is to simply manage the pests as best you can, trying to keep their numbers low enough, so that you still have something worthwhile to harvest.

They fail to realize that even though it’s not physical it still cost money to make.
Would they ‘steal’ a car? Do they make anything physical at their job? Unless they’re paid for blood or sperm they are not. Would they like to work for 6 months and have their boss tell them they won’t be paid because they didn’t actually create anything physical.

Do they really think artists, studios, writers, etc. will continue to work and create things if they can’t get paid? At that time they’ll be spending their days watching someone falling on youtube, playing their old Atari games and reading tweets, hopping to find a story.

Sure you can save a lot of money by not paying but you can say the same thing about anything – cars, gas, food,house, etc Just because you want have it but don’t have the money to buy doesn’t make it right to free access.

No, they aren’t.

Technically, the people who download and watch your movies are not stealing your work, the person who made of with your goods in the first place did. This is the traditional layperson understanding of piracy and bootlegging; selling knockoffs of IP diverting funds from the producer to people with no connection to the original work. Pirates and bootleggers package IP as their own and sell it, directly undercutting the legitimate market. Money and profit are the clear motive.

It is important to understand that this is not, for the most part, what is going on the all-the-world-for-free crowd. While there is a measurable financial impact, even the “pirates” for the most part have no intention of making money for the nabbing of a movie before its release. Profit is not their motive. It is also hard to accuse the public are “supporting” piracy, because for the most part, neither party is exchanging money for the transaction. A guy that buys a “Bolex” watch knows he is not paying the original manufacturer, the grandma that watches a video streamed to her computer from a movie site for free does not. This is a factor in why the public isn’t biting on the piracy-is-theft PR and why file sharing is rampant.

This does not make the person who sees their work appear all over the internet (while their pockets stay empty) feel any better, but it is important to understand if you want to forge an effective moral argument. Because no money exchanged hands and the recipient of the work didn’t break into your house, you are not flipping that moral switch in their minds when you use the word “theft”, and no amount of public education or lecturing will change that. My advice is to drop that line of argument and come up with a better one that taglines the act in a more accurate way.

Here’s the thing, too: I’m more likely to purchase something from an artist who makes their music available for free. Whether that’s streaming on a site like MySpace or Last.fm or as a download, if I can try it out first, I’m much more likely to pay for it. I think the same is true for artists all over the place.

I hear countless stories on an almost daily basis about artists who have benefited from pirated works. I can’t remember off the top of my head who it was, but a certain novelist said he sees a noticeable increase in his sales every time a new pirated version of one of his books is released. He went from being a mid-list author to a best-seller and he attributes a large part of his success to the pirates who have “stollen” his work (he’s even gone so far as to put “pirated” copies out there himself).

I’m not saying that it’s right or that it always results in a benefit. I’m just saying that it’s not necessarily always a *bad* thing for those involved. If it gets your work out there to a larger audience, that can mean increased long-term success. So those residuals will only keep growing in the future…

And sadly, there seems to be no answer but perhaps what you suggested: to put a face on the people who are really hurting because of this practice.

For those who download…even just a little bit, ask yourself this question: If that book, movie or song was behind a glass window, would you break that window to steal it? Would you shoplift it from a store? Illegal downloads are exactly the same thing.