"If u ask a neighbor, a family man to stop stealing your tools in the shed and u ask him over and over to stop and he doesn;t. You tell him u know bout the weed in his basement and he still tells u off."
pnx,
i don't understand how you and others are comparing physical property to intellectual, intangible property. for one, if someone comes directly into my shed on my land and steals from me and i catch them, i won't be asking him questions. i may or may not let them slide the first time. i'll let them know they've been caught and they need to go away and not try it again or the consequences would be great. a second time, i'm calling the cops and that should take care of the prob. a third and fourth time...for me, it wouldn't go that far, but if they keep doing it repeatedly and i keep letting them slide, then i'm the fool.
"hey, i know you have a meth lab in your basement so you better back off buddy or i'll tell everyone." yet they keep stealing from me even after that warning? who's the real fool here if i continue to let this happen?
but from your example, he's stealing from me direct. to compare this to file sharing is like hacking into servers or cracking sites and doing a site rip or downloading whatever files you want once you've infiltrated their site. this happens on a very regular basis all over the internet and boils down to security.
your home should be well lit on the outside. your shed should have locks on it, right? your computer has a firewall. sites have usernames and passwords and encryption. yes, if someone steals directly from you, you could make that comparison that both are one and the same. but if your house is in, let's say japan, are you concerned that someone from panama is gonna steal your tools? you leave your car door unlocked, is it a surprise that someone stole the stereo? you see what i'm saying?
there's direct and indirect theft. stealing from the shed is direct. going to a site like this one and dl'ing a file isn't. who's the real criminal: the person making the file available or the person downloading it? is a dl'er stealing directly from adam if they go to wherever (bittorrent, rapidsh, megaup, depos, p2p) to get their file? i don't think so. is the original sharer doing the same? i still don't think so. the only thing is that his property is being distributed without his permission but never once was it "stolen" from him. am i making sense?
and that's the diff. you steal from me directly, then we have a major prob. you get my goods from other means, then what am i gonna do? go after you or go after the person you got it from? in the case of digital media, that's an impossible course of action. cuz once it's out there, it's out there permanently.
so a person mouthing off after stealing your tools is liable to catch a beatdown. you can see them right in front of you. not the same for a file sharer. if they have the file, they got it from someone most likely, and that someone is sharing and other people are sharing and so on and so forth. one person stealing from you direct is much easier to handle (and a totally diff ballgame) than a whole network of unknown people getting access to your tools from someone else.
Bernard 23:08:10 12/16/2008