It’s never been stealing, it’s infringement of copyright, which aught to carry much less of a penalty since the original owner was not deprived of their property.
But we live in hell, so capitalism literally bankrupts families when they film their kid dancing to music that was playing on a public broadcast on FM radio.
Piracy isn’t stealing anyway
They call it stealing because the real legal term is unlawful copying or reproducing without copyright permits, and that sounds closer to a misdemeanor.
If we claim someone has stolen thousands of songs causing millions of dolars in damages it does look like a felony, and that is the way they’ve chosen to scare us.
If we claim someone has stolen thousands of songs causing millions of dolars in damages
An even funnier premise in the streaming era, where artists get paid like $0.005 per stream. You’d have to rack up 20,000 plays across these “stolen” songs before it “costs” the artist $100
I feel the same way about people applying terms like “theft” to events of intellectual property misuse like copying another artist’s art style, reusing another comedian’s jokes, etc. Those things are problems of their own, but should not be called “theft”.
Gatekeeping technology is a personal irritation of mine.
The famicom and capacitor electrolytes should not belong to individual companies, they belong to all of humanity.
