El Tux wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:19:37 +0100, Alexander Terekhov wrote: > > > El Tux wrote: > > > > [... Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) ...] > > > > Oh dear El Tux, that (1985) was long before December 16, 1997, when > > President Clinton signed HR 2265 -- the No Electronic Theft Act -- into > > law. > > Dear Alexander, that doesn't matter in the least because we're > discussing concepts here, not legal definitions which, BTW, tend to > use common words in uncommon ways. The poster cited a USSC judge's > comment to support the *concept* that file-sharing is stealing, and I > quoted another to show that not all USSC judges share the same > view. Simple black-and-white cases rarely make it to the USSC so it's > commonplace for the justices to disagree with each other. One can find > a quote to support either side of just about anything that's been > brought before the Supreme Court.
You brought up Dowling. All it shows is that, under a the language of a particular federal statute, the conduct of the defendant of making unauthorized copies of Elvis Presley records was not included. There is no reason why Congress could not have included what the defendant did within the National Stolen Property Act. It didn't, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't. For example, Utah has a general theft (78-6-401 et seq) as part of its criminal code, in Chapter 6, "Offenses against property". And in its definition of "property," the legislature included not only "real estate" and "tangible and intangible personal property" but also "trade secrets, meaning the whole or any portion of any scientific or technical information, design, process, procedure, formula or invention which the owner thereof intends to be available only to persons selected by him." So, in Utah at least, it is just as proper to say that a trade secret was stolen as it is to say that a car is stolen, since both violate the same statute. Copyrights and patents weren't included in Utah's penal code when it was revised in 1973, presumably because they were to be subject to whatever laws Congress passes. But there is nothing in the Supreme Court's opinion that would prevent Congress from including criminal copyright infringement within the particular act that was being considered in Dowling. End quote. Attribution: Lee Hollaar Now please (re)visit http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju48724.000/hju48724_0.HTM (COPYRIGHT PIRACY, AND H.R. 2265, THE NO ELECTRONIC THEFT (NET) ACT) regards, alexander. -- "Notwithstanding Jacobsen's confused discussion of unilateral contracts, bilateral contracts, implied licenses, "licenses to the world" and "bare" licenses in his Appellant's Brief, the issue at hand is fairly simple." -- Brief of Appellees (CAFC 2008-1001). _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
