[LINK] Theft, copyright, larceny...

[Stewart Fist]

Craig wrote:
> 
> nope. as i understand it, the guy didn't sell anything. he was just a
> warez kiddie, distributing copied games etc for free.

So if I rob a bank and then distribute the cash to other people in Sherwood
Forest, like Robin Hood, I haven't been guilty of theft.

The law doesn't apply to me.


> what they're trying to do is establish the newspeak that "copyright
> infringement" (of any kind) is "theft".

The "(of any kind)" sort of slipped in there Craig. Suggesting home taping
of TV programs, perhaps?

No.  It applies to people who rip off someone else's property to the tune of
$60 million.  And I don't know, or care, whether that is the retail value,
the whole sale value, the cost of producing the software, or the cost of
making the disks.  

Until someone convinces me that the real value was a trivial 60 cents,
rather the $60 million dollars claimed (ie +/- $59.99999 million) then it is
theft.

What figure do you put on it?  And on what basis?

>they are being assisted in this
> endeavour by governments, pro-business lobby groups, and journalists (both
> willing corporate shills and the semantically-lazy).


Do you people honestly believe that an Australian court allowed him to be
extradited to the USA on frivolous grounds for a trivial offense ?

Or that the Americans put years of effort into getting him extradited, when
they have a 300 million home video-tapers of their own they could prosecute?

Or that an American court then sentenced him to a long term in gaol on
similar frivolous grounds for a trivial offense ?

Then that governments, pro-business lobbygroups, journalists, willing
corporate shills and semantically-lazy people (presumably meaning me) then
conspired to beat this all up into a story that appeared world-wide in the
newspapers ?


This has to be the conspiracy theory to beat all conspiracy theories.



-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458