Not to mention current business practice. Companies all over the world view those copyrights as property. They view what you write off as potential as their property. After all, according to copyright law, that copy should not exist without their say so, and their say so would get them money. So the physical product is meaningless - it's the content that is an actual asset of the company. In fact, I think they even assign values to it on the balance sheets and so forth.
So you many not think that the copy, which literally stole no physical property, has no value. Businesses and Law will tend to disagree. Dirty Capitalist Pigdogs.
?
I haven't suggested it had no value at all, far from it. I do know that prior to the advent of MP3 players there was no real debate about electronic copies made for personal use and sharing among freinds. None. So the current perception that ANY sharing of information electronically without the specific permission of the creator as wrong is a relatively new phenomenon.
Lets leave aside the 'magic copy machine' debates, the EASE of sharing now and go back to our cabinet. You make the cabinet and hope to sell it for 300 dollars, remember. Some guy comes along and sees your cabinet, but rather than buy it he memorizes what it looks like and goes out and builds for himself an identical cabinet. Did he steal it? Obviously you can't sell him the cabinet you just made now. Heck, he may even go into business selling cabinets just like yours!
If he does, you may be able to make a case that he violated you IP, stealing your cabinet design and using it to directly compete with you. But, since we are dealing with a physical object now, it is a lot harder to argue it is a de facto theft. He may have stolen the design, or the idea... but the idea itself is not protected and to a certain extent I don't think it should be.
Art, music or RPG games may be trickier in the details. After all, the RPG industry is full of games that owe their designs and existance to the old school D&D without a lick of shame about 'copyrights'. But the product, the written pages if you will, or the recordings of performances... these are the cabinets. Our mythical cabinet 'theif' isn't building his own, he isn't reading your ideas and rewriting them (which is, after all, strictly legal...), he's literally copying your words verbatim (which is not, after all, legal).
Therein lies the debate. It is not theft of a book, because you didn't loose any books. Is it theft at all? It depends on your definition of the term, perhaps. Conversationally? No doubt about it, it is theft. Legally? You claim, and back up with examples, that it is. Others claim those laws are wacky and written to benefit wealthy corporate intrests... with some merit.
I agree, for once, with certain posters on this, however: Our legal and ethical standpoint has not caught up with the very real facts of life brought about by modern technology. If we extrapolate out our current situation into Star Trek replicator technology what, exactly do we get? Not the utopian ideals of Roddenberry and crew, but a world of bootleggers and criminals 'fighting the man' in the form of concentrated wealth in the hands of faceless corporate organisms. :rolleyes: