[LINK] Theft, copyright, larceny...

[Stewart Fist]

Brendan writes:

> BTW the context of this discussion was the commenting on a legal case by a law
officer.

It was a statement made outside the court by an attorney briefing
journalists for the purpose of public consumption.

You may consider it hyperbole, but no one on the Link has any claim to never
engaging in hyperbole, surely?

I don't consider it hyperbole when the guy in question is charged with a $60
million offense.

 
> This is inverted.  The point is the terms are *not* used in the community,

They are used every day in the community, and most people understand that
you don't need to use a gun to commit theft.
 
> they are used by the lawyers of media companies to brand their initiatives
> (apparently successfully).  They are used specifically to associate
> infringement (which no one, if home taping, Napster etc is any guide, has any
> moral qualms with) with known morally bad behaviour.


Now that is inverted hyperbole.  How can you equate a $60 million theft of
software with someone "home taping".

> 
> How many members of the community do you know who would describe copyright
> infringements as theft or stealing?

Virtually all.


> There will be some, and there will be
> more in certain circumstances (eg copying on a substantial scale) but overall?

Don't you consider $60 million to be a "substantial scale" ?
 
> If it's really "theft" the word should describe all/most infringements,
> otherwise it's rhetoric.  The fact that journalists are picking it up is only
> evidence that they have been co-opted (or are 5th columnists).

Just to refresh people's memories:  The original case report was:

Australian jailed in US for Internet piracy
 By Washington correspondent Michael Rowland
Posted Sat Jun 23 2007 9:48am AEST

An Australian who ran one of the world's most infamous Internet piracy
operations has been sentenced to more than four years in a US jail.

 Hew Raymond Griffiths ran the piracy group Drink or Die from his home at
Bateau Bay on the New South Wales central coast. He was extradited to the US
earlier this year to face charges relating to the theft of nearly 60 million
worth of software movies and music.

 A judge in the US state of Virginia has sentenced Griffiths to 51 months in
jail.

 US District Attorney Chuck Rosenburg has hailed the conviction saying that
whether committed with a gun or a keyboard theft is theft.  Mr Rosenburg
says those engaging in Internet piracy are now on notice the US can and will
reach them wherever they live.




-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
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