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Originally posted by HarmlessRabbit
Agreed on your technical point. However, I would still call it stealing. You are taking someone else's artistic work, which they gave a single company the exclusive right to distribution, and you are bypassing the intent of the artist and their distribution company.
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Well, I suppose I can't stop you from using the term colloquially but consider this. If I steal a chair from you, I've deprived you of the ability to enjoy that chair. But if I look at your chair, and then copy your chair, I can enjoy my chair and you can enjoy yours and everyone is happy. This is obviously not "theft," yet it is exactly what people are doing with P2P, so you can see my reluctance in calling it "theft." That's just a PR ploy by the RIAA (and the like) that I refuse to take part in.
Now, of course, the artists (or whomever) have a
copyright to that chair so it is illegal for me to do the simple (and innocent) task of even looking at your chair to make my own. This would be copyright infringement. There are those who suggest that this doesn't sound as bad as theft? To those people, I would contend that it
isn't as bad as theft. Again, company PR...
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P2P is not the same as making a buddy a mix tape. It's more akin to professional DVD piracy. You are distributing complete copies of copyrighted works to potentially hundreds of anonymous strangers, not distributing mix tapes to friends or personal backups to a videotape.
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Here is the crux of the problem. Please read what you have just said. "You
are distributing complete copies of
copyrighted works..." Says who? You are only
assuming that they're copyrighted? They needn't be and, if they are not, then there is no crime.
Trying to ban P2P is like trying to ban knives. Are you going to assume that someone with a knife will go out to knife someone? No, you arrest the criminal after
he (rarely she) commits the crime. In other words, you arrest the criminal and
not the tool the criminal used.
By that same token, it's perfectly legal and useful to distribute a file using P2P, but some people may distribute copyrighted files with it. Sue the violators and not the tool!
Incidentally, this is what the RIAA is currently doing, along with a rather big PR campaign, but they are doing so
only because they were unable to legislate Kazaa (I forget the actual company name) out of existence, which is reprehensible, in my opinion...