Bill Gatliff writes:
> With all due respect, and a certain unwillingness to get distracted
> from the main thread of discussion or to further inflame an already
> pretty volatile situation, I think that "theft" may in fact be the
> appropriate term to use here.
Theft, n.:
1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious
taking and removing of personal property, with an intent
to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.
[1913 Webster]
2. The thing stolen. [R.]
[1913 Webster]
Infringing copyright is not theft, since nothing is removed from its
rightful place. Similarly, the purported violation of the GPL in "the
main thread of discussion" does not involve removal of any property.
The authors of the GPL made clear what their intent was: to propagate
certain freedoms to the users (in practice, recipients) of software,
not to preserve anyone's physical property rights. Infringing those
copyrights or hoarding those freedoms may be moral or legal wrongs of
a degree similar to theft but they are _not_ theft.
Michael Poole
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