Subject:
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Re: Theft, Definitive statements vs shaping thoughts(was Re: 2001 Set info
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.terms
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Date:
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Thu, 10 Aug 2000 21:00:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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5656 times
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In lugnet.admin.terms, Matthew Miller writes:
> Larry Pieniazek <lpieniazek@mercator.com> wrote:
> > I guess I'm dismayed that this question even came up. You seem to be asking
> > when is it OK to steal stuff, in essence. Like I said way back when the price
>
> Larry -- you use the word "steal" here, and "theft" in your subject. This
> frames the question in colored terms. In my understanding, violation of
> intellectual property rights is not theft under the law. (And is unlike
> material theft in several important ways.) Since it is a legal matter that
> we're talking about here, it's not helpful to use imperfect analogies.
Feel free to provide a cite. I don't have a Lexis ID but the 10 minutes I
spent on altavista looking mostly bolstered the opposite view. That's not a
definitive proof, mind you, as people are sloppy with words all the time.
Till then, and perhaps even beyond, I'll stand by my characterization,
including the (rather deliberate) coloring.
> I'm not advocating violation of trade secret rights, mind you.
What then, pray tell, are you advocating?
> I just don't want the discussion distorted by bad terminology.
Nor do I. Stealing trade secrets is wrong, and using a word that somehow
implies that what one does when one does that is *not* converting the property
of another would certainly qualify as bad terminology to my way of thinking.
If you somehow think it's OK to steal, feel free to take it up in .debate...
I'll grant that what exactly *is* intellectual property in the general case is
pretty fuzzy at the moment, but this particular incident struck me as pretty
cut and dried when I first saw it and nothing has changed that opinion. Was
Lego lax? Was Target lax? No doubt. But the fact that I leave my keys in the
car with the engine running doesn't make it any less stealing when a thief
drives off in it either.
This was marketing info that TLC has said they considered proprietary. Are you
doubting their word on that? We're not talking about the integers here, or 4
digit numbers, there's a lot more business meaning than that in this data and
you know it. Hence, in this particular case, it's cut and dried, this info was
TLC property improperly disclosed.
On Napster: While Napster itself may not be doing anything more than creating
an easy channel, people who use Napster to get copies of music that they
otherwise would have purchased are stealing.
++Lar
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