> With the rate of IP theft, > > You cannot steal something that is intangible. I can steal your > hammer, I cannot steal your code.
That is a matter of law, not opinion. It is a matter of law, and the English language. If you are saying: "the legal concepts of property and ownership should not extend to things that are intangible", then we might have an interesting debate on some other list. Following this discussion, we might decide to collaborate in some form of activism. Find a list and we can have that debate. But the plain fact is that today you are utterly wrong. As a matter of law, things that are intangible absolutely *can* be stolen. You obviously don't know the law, it has a nice definition of `theft'. In the court you will never hear `IP theft', you will hear copyright infrigment, trademark and patent violations, but not `IP theft', since it has no legal meaning, logical meaning or any relation to reality. You won't even hear the word `intelectual property', since that too has no leagal meaning, since property cannot be intellectual. Infact, just speaking about IP in general terms is simply confusing, since it touches on several aspects of law, most of them not even related with each other. It also spread the misconception that e.g. software should be treated like physical objects. Theft is ethically and morally wrong, copying e.g. software even if the license doesn't allow it in the legal sense, isn't. Since nobody looses that you copy something. _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
