Tell me with a straight face that you'd feel just as bad if you never knew someone made a perfect copy of your car while you were sleeping as you would if they had physically stolen it and you woke up to an empty parking space. You'd be full of s@#$ if you said yes. I know you aren't that stupid and I know most other people aren't.
This isn't really a fair question, due to context. You're quite correct insofar as you your conclusion, but since the car doesn't represent my "intellectual property", but in fact, physical property. You can't use one, as a comparison for the other. The analog is flawed. That's why we use different nomenclature for different types of theft.
To tap into another hypothetical situation, let's say I wrote a song, you came to my house, got me drunk, and stole the only copy I had, then beat me to the copyright office with it. Should you be charged with 2 crimes, or just 1? If only one, which one?
There's a big difference between stealing a car off a lot and making a perfect duplicate for yourself (impossible of course, but file copying sufficiently mimics such magic).
Of course there is, but again the physical property, to intellectual property analog is invalid. Since you're so fond of this line of reasoning, perhaps you might find, "if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound", equally fraught with enough doggerel to be entertaining.
Whether or not it is wrong to copy media isn't up for debate. Hell yes it is wrong and illegal, but it isn't stealing. It isn't (typically) the same severity as stealing either. That doesn't make it right, but it makes all the difference at the end of the day when you're being prosecuted for the infringement of someone's intellectual property.
But the tired old argument of all those crybabies out there (most of which are lying) of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway!" really DOES matter, like it or not.
You're preaching to the choir here. I don't think that the entertainment industry has the right to claim $xxx.xxx.xx losses, when in reality they only suffered $xxx.xx in actual losses. And that's a point for the torrent set, I suppose. But there's the, "it wasn't worth buying so I stole it BS", coming from that side of the bathroom.
In a court, intent matters. Loss matters. Many things matter and the depth of that conversation is subverted by people who make this a "stealing is wrong!" debate. Of course stealing is wrong... now can we get discuss copying music again?
The RIAA is a bunch of Fascist looney toons who think that every time you need music you've purchased in a different format, for your own purposes, that you should rebuy it!
I buy CDs I like, because I like to have them. That said, I don't buy CDs I don't like just to have them. But, I do believe, that hardcore music down loaders, take as much as they can, just because they can. The net result of this is, they just hand the RIAA the ammunition they need to concoct the bizarre numbers regarding, "industry losses", that they need to further influence legislation.
When I was young, we smoked pot, dodged the draft, played hooky from school, and fornicated out of wedlock. That said, we knew it was wrong, and had the good taste to shut up about it, instead of standing on a soapbox and giving socio-pathological rants about it, claiming it was right, justifying it to ourselves, and whichever other juvenile delinquents who were unfortunate to have to listen to it..
And "intent" really doesn't matter that much in court. For example, "I went there to propose marriage, but I caught her in bed with another man, so I killed both of them. I didn't mean it, I just went crazy. How far do you think that would fly in a court of law? Once upon a time in a French Court maybe. But hey, as far as I'm concerned, she wouldn't shave her armpits, so he can keep her. Do you get the analog there? Or maybe I should have said, "she won't shave her armpits, smells like a cow, is flat out ugly, so I'll steal her to put her out of her misery".
One last thought: I was brought up to believe that, "two wrongs don't make a right"! Yet all the BS that comes out of the downloading set, flies directly in the face of that concept. So what do you think Rick, do two wrongs make a right?
