On Wed, February 10, 2010 15:44, mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Well in legal terms you are correct, but I am an old man. I always > learned that when someone takes something that doesn't belong to them > without permission its stealing. Copyright infringement = stealing in my > way of thinking. No the penalties are not the same, but that shouldn't > affect the real term and not be afraid to use it. They were deprived of > the control that was rightly there's as the creator of that work. They > were also deprived of the income that the work would have produced, just > as if they had taken a few hundreds out of the persons wallet. > > I am old. Politicians call it spin. Lawyers often call it debate. Yet > most preachers will call it lying. Legal code doesn't change the basic > fact that it is an intentional untruth. You're assuming your intended conclusion there. I would say it *isn't* stealing, as it doesn't meet the basic definition of that word. Maybe I won't convince you, and we'll end up with differing opinions (shock horror!). But what you're saying sounds remarkably like "I know I'm right and I won't discuss it". Particularly since many, many copyright infringements are not in situations where there was ever any slightest possibility of licensing the image at a high rate. (Note that I'm not saying it's okay; I'm saying that equating it to theft is bringing along a lot of inappropriate baggage and interfering with figuring out a workable solution to the real problem.) -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
