> > What is your definition of "property"? > Mine is: "Anything subject to human control."
What is your definition of "stealing?" Mine is: depriving another person of possession of his property. Copyright violation does not deprive another person either of possession or use ("control") of his property. It might reduce his opportunities for profit (opportunity cost), but this is profit from a temporary legal monopoly--perhaps an entirely legitimate monopoly from a utilitarian point of view, but monopoly privileges nonetheless. If GM is not permitted to have a monopoly on auto manufacturing, thus depriving them of some opportunities to profit, is this stealing their property? Of course not, because no one has an inherent right to a monopoly. I'm not stealing from the barber if I cut my own hair, or persuade a mother, girlfriend, or whoever to do it for me for free, even if the cut is indistinguishable from the local barber's own work, and even if it deprives the barber of profit opportunities. Monopolies, such as copyrights and patents, are granted solely for reasons of superior social utility--namely, to encourage creative work which might not otherwise be performed. (I expect this was a valuable law in a pre-industrial society in which 90% of the population were employeed as farm workers. I'm not sure it has much value in a highly industrialized economy wherein most people are city dwellers, half the citizenry enrolls in college, farmers are less than 3% of the population, and technology is fast making many of these monopolies unenforceable.) But what is the optimum tradeoff between incentives created by granting these temporary monopolies and removing or reducing the incentives so as to promote more quickly the spread of innovation and knowledge throughout society? As soon as we ask this question, it becomes possible to challenge existing copyright or similar laws, which were created purely for utilitarian reasons, on utilitarian grounds as well as libertarian. ~Alypius Skinner .