I have to admit that I don't think of infringement and theft in the same lines
And legally you're quite right not to do so. It irritates the hell out of me every time I see copyright infringement referred to as 'theft' because theft in a legal sense has a very tightly defined meaning, which is:
A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Clearly a fanfiction writer, vidder or fan-artist does not and cannot 'appropriate' the copyright holder's property, nor do they act dishonestly (no one's attempting to claim that the original show, film, book etc is theirs), nor are they depriving the copyright owner of their own rights to their own copyright.
I mean, there's a reason why it's called copyright infringement and not theft, you know! *g* I realise that some lay-people might argue that it's all a question of semantics but legally it very clearly isn't - there's a huge difference between theft and copyright infringement. Not least that theft is always a crime and copyright infringement is pretty much always a civil matter only. So, yes, I'm completely in agreement with you on this point and I love your very cool analogies. Plagiarism (can be) theft, copyright infringement is never 'theft'.
Some great ideas in the rest of your comments, to which I'll refrain from saying 'word' (although that's pretty much what I mean *g*).
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carisma_sensei
Re: Just to clarify
Date: 2003-04-21 11:17 am (UTC)And legally you're quite right not to do so. It irritates the hell out of me every time I see copyright infringement referred to as 'theft' because theft in a legal sense has a very tightly defined meaning, which is:
Clearly a fanfiction writer, vidder or fan-artist does not and cannot 'appropriate' the copyright holder's property, nor do they act dishonestly (no one's attempting to claim that the original show, film, book etc is theirs), nor are they depriving the copyright owner of their own rights to their own copyright.
I mean, there's a reason why it's called copyright infringement and not theft, you know! *g* I realise that some lay-people might argue that it's all a question of semantics but legally it very clearly isn't - there's a huge difference between theft and copyright infringement. Not least that theft is always a crime and copyright infringement is pretty much always a civil matter only. So, yes, I'm completely in agreement with you on this point and I love your very cool analogies. Plagiarism (can be) theft, copyright infringement is never 'theft'.
Some great ideas in the rest of your comments, to which I'll refrain from saying 'word' (although that's pretty much what I mean *g*).