Because the owner of the Ferrari can still drive the Ferrari.

NOW you are getting into deeper illegal waters. My original argument wasn't based on the manufacture of fake Ferrari's with intent to sell, it was based on a single "end ferrari user" making a duplicate for him/herself. Similarly those people who download pirate movies to sell in malls are much more morally dubious than people pirating for their own consumption.

Once you go into design copying with intent to sell, then yes, this is much more "wrong"

No, just because English speakers lazily use terms like theft and stealing incorrectly for acts of copying, doesn't mean that their lazy and incorrect application of the term redefines the act.

Theft and stealing are terms to describe the deprivation of an owned "thing" from a person who owns it. Theft is not because you have a thing that you shouldn't have; theft is when you deprive me of a thing I own.

Also, I should have added, that the label isn't always applied incorrectly, even when it's used lazily.

All of these are actually theft because you a depriving someone of something.

Just because people use the English language incorrectly, doesn't mean that incorrect English becomes correct.

"You stole my idea" - this isn't actually theft, people are just too lazy (or not educated enough) to say "you copied my idea and implemented it before I did."

"You took the words right out of my mouth" - this statement isn't even colloquially attributed to any sort of theft. Im not quite sure why you used it in your argument. This statement is used as an expression of "I agree with you," not an argument of "you stole my idea" (see above).

"I stole past the ticket desk and straight into the theater" - I've never heard this statement before, the normal statement people would use is "I snuck into the theatre" - which implies a trespassing crime (which it is), not a theft crime (which it isn't).

So maybe you're "too native" of a speaker to understand that just because people lazily apply the term "steal" to a variety of concepts, doesn't mean that the label of "steal" is a correct one.

Wow, this is good. You should consider blogging this point (and posting it to hacker news) rather than letting this idea flounder in slashdot comment obscurity.

Seriously, this point deserves to be more than just some comment.

When the cold war was happening, spys would actually "steal" state secrets; as in, they would take a dossier of papers.

The term stole/steal stuck. But in today's context, the use of the term "steal/stole" is incorrect. News agencies should now report that "someone 'obtained an unauthorized copy' of state secrets" .

I also develop some open source software (original bsd license), you can copy my copyrighted material because _I expressly give you permission to do so_ AND you must adhere to certain stipulations that *I* demand.

One of those demands is that you cannot claim that YOU wrote the software, another of those demands is that you cannot use my name and/or reputation to sell any derivative software you create. The last of these demands is that when you distribute MY software, you distribute with it my list of demands.

So while it's true that you can copy my copyrighted material legally, it's also true that there are ways to copy my copyrighted material illegally (if you don't meet my copyright demands).

No, unlicensed copying IS unethical.

What is at question is HOW unethical it is, and how to prevent unlicensed copying without going draconian.

Copying is not stealing is rarely, if ever, used as a justification for copyright infringement.

It's simply a statement that you should not judge a copyright infringer, the same as you would a thief. And you should not label an infringer a thief.

This argument is pointless (im not quite sure why I bothered to join it).

and you murdered the whitespace that would exist if you didn't post a reply to his reply. Murderer!

Lets just say that instead of it taking Louis $250k to produce the video, it cost him $100Million. Thus, he now has to raise his price to from $5 to $45.

Do you expect that people will be downloading from him, or going to the pirate bay?

This is the difference between a cheepo comedy show, and a mega hollywood blockbuster.

That was consensual bitch! If you didn't want it, should shouldn't have dressed in all that tight fitting subprime hoochie momma mortgage.

WHORE!

Yes, and your new idea that companies are child molesters has "given birth" to new thoughts in my head; thus I'm going to take you to court to get my child support payments.

You're not understanding a key part of the argument. The difference between copyright infringement and stealing is the deprivation of the original work from the owner.

In the case of the Ferrari, the copyright infringer isn't stealing the car, she is manufacturing an exact duplicate of the car. This is still morally "wrong" because Ferrari had to work hard to come up with the design of the car, but it isn't as wrong as stealing, because the copyright infringer didn't take the actual product.

Similarly, the copyright infringer isn't stealing the boxed software the same as a shoplifter. In the case of boxed software, the vendor is the one being stolen from. The vendor paid the manufacturer a certain amount for the boxed software, and pays a certain amount for the location where she does her vending; when a shoplifter takes from the vendor, she is depriving the vendor from selling the boxed software to ANOTHER person; thus a TRUE deprivation of a sale.

Now all that aside, I agree with your statement of "licence, plus some punitive amount" as the penalty for copyright infringement. But this isn't the same as theft, which should come with additional punishment (eg licence + punitive + short incarceration)

Sorry, did you just make the argument that autistic people are little more than apes?