US Vice President promotes lie about US piracy law

Vice President Joe Biden introduced the Joint Strategic Plan to combat intellectual property theft today. In his speech Biden declared war on ‘pirate’ websites, both foreign and domestic, arguing that piracy is theft and a potential threat to national security. Read the article at torrentfreak.com.

Upon the nomination of US President Obama to office my friends told me that Joe Biden, his chosen VP, happened to maintain a penchant for gaffes—but this isn’t exactly what I thought they meant.

To top it off the Vice President reiterated the words commonly uttered by pro-copyright lobbyists such as the RIAA and MPAA. “Piracy is theft, clean and simple, it’s smash and grab,” Biden said, comparing unauthorized downloading to robbing a jewelry store. Although semantically incorrect, since ‘theft’ implies that something is taken away and not copied, the message is clear.

I am not sure what the Vice President is smoking, but it’s obvious that the MAFIAA have spiked his weed with the propaganda of stupid. There is nothing clean or simple about copyright being theft except for in a diseased left-brain sort of stretching-facts-to-fit fashion. It’s especially not comparable to burglary. Nothing gets smashed (no windows, no doors, no barrier that needs repair later) and in a sort of way nothing gets grabbed (no product taken needing to be replaced, no store owner waiting on insurance to make up the loss.) No. Something gets copied. The only working metaphor comparing copyright to a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store is that one morning a jeweler wakes up to discover all of their alarms, windows, and cases intact—no jewelry missing, nor disturbed—but the store across the street is now selling the exact same product.

“No, officer they didn’t take anything they copied it exactly and are high tailing it out of here to sell it across the border! Arrest them!”

In fact, the US Supreme Court does not agree with the MAFIAA or Vice President Biden in this account. In their 1980 decision in Dowling vs. United States the Supreme Court opined that “copyright infringement is not theft.” Both of these terms have distinct definitions in our legal system and they don’t overlap—playing dishonest games with language to pretend that they do makes for some stunningly disingenuous acts by our leaders.

Is copyright infringement illegal? Yes. Is theft illegal? Yes. Is copyright infringement: theft? …vandalism? …racketeering? …assault? Shall I continue to compare illegal acts that don’t legally overlap seeking a deceitful metaphor? This is the basis of this propaganda spread by the MAFIAA and their PR cronies and we, the public, shouldn’t be falling for it.

Tell us that copyright infringement is a problem; then show us why it’s a problem. Stop bleating at us with loaded language, propaganda, and non-sequiturs trying to connect these acts to laws that don’t relate to them. If you cannot argue copyright infringement poses a threat to us, without being dishonest about its place in our digital culture, then perhaps it’s because you don’t have the case you pretend you do.

Does Biden know better? Probably. The copyright and IP law lobbies of the RIAA and MPAA to create an IP mafia with public opinion continue apace, but it’s not fooling everyone.

Grow up, Mr. Vice President.

Link, via torrentfreak.com

Copyright infringement is not theft

And this is why I have a problem with morally conflating copyright infringement and theft. This is a response, however haphazard, to people who want to suggest that infringing on a copyright is morally equivalent to theft in order to make this argument.

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Here is in short the problem that I have with conflating copyright infringement and theft. Theft is concrete, it is well defined and understood. If I take an item from a store valued $3, it can be said that I have committed theft. Copyright infringement is abstract, it is fluid and what constitutes infringement is modified by great latitudes all the time. If I sing Happy Birthday and make $30, assuming a royalty of 10% and I don't pay the holder of that copyright that $3; I have committed copyright infringement. Have I really taken that $3 from them without permission? Do we really want to morally entangle these two concepts? Why morally entangle taking a $3 concrete item from a seller and not paying royalties for making money off Happy Birthday.

How can we talk about the morality of copying if we are constantly trying to resolve it with the possession and transfer of concrete objects—when copyright infringement is not at all a concrete thing.

Copyright infringement has affirmative defenses, like “Fair Use;” how does Fair Use apply to theft?* Copyrights don’t last forever, they expire—the ideas that they license don’t expire; how does this apply to the theft of concrete objects?** Is copyright infringement really a special form of theft with fundamentally different rules and effects?

If so, then why call it theft?

When conflating copyright infringement with theft we commit a fallacy of equivocation. We suddenly make any discussion about copying an object equivalent to the taking of that object.

As much as I'm going to say this is bad for talking about copyright infringement:

Think about how saying “taking an object without permission is morally equal to copying an object without permission” affects discussions of theft itself. Can we really have a sane discussion about stealing a car if someone keeps on pointing out that morally it’s exactly as if I just drove off with a copy of the car?

* The problem I face here is that there is no viable metaphor for “Fair Use” with concrete objects in relation to theft. How can I create a discussion about the “Fair Use” of a stolen (borrowed?) car; when the thief gets charged with Grand Theft Auto but argues that they only used the car for 4 hours (a very small percentage of the lifetime of the car) and did so to make a statement about the car. I would have to talk instead about how the thief really came over, made a COPY of the car, and drove that around instead; because infringing on a copyright involves a copy, which doesn't deny access to the original idea to the holder of that idea.

** Another fundamental difference between how concrete objects and abstract ideas are treated. Concrete objects are possessions and their theft denies the possessor their use; but ideas are abstract and COPYright covers the license to copy it. After the copyright expires it is no longer infringement to copy that object; but are there any concrete objects where my ownership of them expires? Where twenty years after building this car, suddenly anyone in the world can just come and take it from me and it's not theft anymore (once again, a failure of metaphor because we would have to talk about them coming to take a COPY of my car.)