OT: Forum legalish question

K1VP k1vp at grizzy.com
Tue Mar 7 10:11:02 EST 2006


On Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:29:27 -0500
Ed Lawson <elawson at grizzy.com> wrote:


> Without taking a position on whether copyright infringement is
> theft,

Just to clarify, all legal issues related to copyrights are
controlled by federal law and under federal law the illegal use
of copyrighted material is defined by statute as copyright
infringement and not theft.  Therefore, in a legal sense it is
true that "theft" is not the proper term to apply to acts of
copyright infringement. However, the term theft is commonly used
in relation to copyright infringement.  For example the "No
Electronic Theft Act" which relates to copyright infringement.

Since dictionaries simply record at any given time what is the
common usage of words in a society (they do not establish or
fix  meanings to words), I suspect the term theft will eventually
be recognized has having a more expansive meaning.

And now I will go back to my den not to rise for this thread
again.

Ed Lawson



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