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Well it is breach of copyright and therefore an, illegal act of larceny in that the downloader has taken something which does not belong to them without permission, so they do have a case.

Certainly it is illegal, it is copyright infringement, but it is not theft. A downloader is not necessarily depriving someone else of an album or game etc. This would only be true if every downloader would have bought the cd if they hadn't downloaded it. This is patently false. This is why people are always done for copyright infringement, never theft (or larceny).

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Originally posted by merlinthewizard:
Certainly it is illegal, it is copyright infringement, but it is not theft. A downloader is not necessarily depriving someone else of an album or game etc. This would only be true if every downloader would have bought the cd if they hadn't downloaded it. This is patently false. This is why people are always done for copyright infringement, never theft (or larceny).

Because that is the law they have broken. Sorry but breach of copyright is a form of larceny. You are depriving the copyright holder of something, you are taking something without permission.

To use another law normally car theft is tried as taking a vehicle without permission. There are sound legal reasons why the latter charge is preferred but at the end of the day we would generally say that the person stole the car.

Fraud is likewise a form of larceny though it may not involve you actually depriving someone of their actual goods. You may merely have illegaly gained some benefit by a deception.

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Originally posted by Joobs:

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Originally posted by merlinthewizard:
A downloader is not necessarily depriving someone else of an album or game etc. This would only be true if every downloader would have bought the cd if they hadn't downloaded it. This is patently false.

you are taking something without permission.

Sorry, meant to add that in many instances you are depriving the copyright holder of his royalties or dues from a sale. To argue that one wouldn't have wanted the download had it not been illegally available holds no water. That you have downloaded it shows your wish to have that piece of material and that it must have worth to you. That one may not have bought the CD, etc. at its commercial costing does not make it worthless or negate its actual commercial value.

i just want to make it absolutely clear to all you argumentative b@sterds that i am extremely poor and if any of you are at all minded to sue for any of my perfectly reasonable comments... you'd be better off going for the channel 4 ISP.

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Originally posted by Joobs:

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Originally posted by Joobs:

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Originally posted by merlinthewizard:
A downloader is not necessarily depriving someone else of an album or game etc. This would only be true if every downloader would have bought the cd if they hadn't downloaded it. This is patently false.

you are taking something without permission.

Sorry, meant to add that in many instances you are depriving the copyright holder of his royalties or dues from a sale. To argue that one wouldn't have wanted the download had it not been illegally available holds no water. That you have downloaded it shows your wish to have that piece of material and that it must have worth to you. That one may not have bought the CD, etc. at its commercial costing does not make it worthless or negate its actual commercial value.

No, you're missing my point. Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay or it. If I but a CD from, say, EMI, I pay them some money. If I steal a CD from a shop, they have lost that CD because it cannot be sold to another customer. Hence it i stealing. If I download it, I am downloading a copy. I am not taking it from EMI, I am not depriving them of income. I'm telling you now that if I could not download music and pick and chose, I would simply listen to the radio. By your argument, listening to someone elses CD would be theft too because you haven't paid any royalties to the record company. I do not want to line the pockes of nasty corporations like EMI and Sony BMG.

Besides, as I stated before, nobody has been prosecuted for theft; don't you think the RIAA and MPAA would have triedif they could?

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Originally posted by Imm12:
Hi all,

Just wanted to hear your opinions, but especially religious people, about what it means to be 'free'.

In my opinion the term 'free' or 'freedom' is used rather loosely. In this country we only have freedom to a certain extent, the government and laws of the land place certain restrictions on what we can and cannot do with such freedom. Whilst we in the UK live in a democracy and have much more freedom than say, Iraq and the women there, maybe the term freedom is used to describe one extreme to another.

Any thoughts?

I believe true freedom to be more than external (i.e. linked to the laws of the land and government restrictions) but internal as well. For instance there is the freedom to smoke, but that will end in addiction, which takes away personal freedom to choose whether or not to smoke - and takes a painful process to regain that freedom. This also relates to many other issues that go deep emotionally and spiritually, where we get bound up and don't have a freedom to be who we could be.

This I believe to be a 'religious' view of freedom and is, I think, what Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians 6:12. "Everything is permissible - but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me - but I will not be mastered by anything". In other words, we can do what we like (seen as freedom) but could end up running into problems because of it (a lack of freedom). Like many things in the Christian faith, there is a paradox.