WC> Copying CDs is theft. It just is.

I am serious as hell. You are saying that copying CDs is theft, I'm saying that it is not. You are not bringing any arguments. OK then but give me the definition of the theft which you think is right, as mine obviously doesn't work for you.

To make explicit the underlying issue: Should one treat intellectual property like material property and consider unauthorised usage (where purchasing a CD means purchasing authorisation) theft? The question already implies that what you buy when you buy a CD is of course not that cheap slice of plastics. I think everyone would agree that it is decent to refer to the author if you quote, i.e. that there IS such a thing as intellectual property. And while there are areas where the payment of authors is handled otherwise (e.g. academics, as I said before) and thus quoting is the only required credit, there are many cases where royalities or license fees are requisite. Why should a profit-oriented car manufacturer bother to develop a new technology which costs him millions, when everyone can simply adopt the method and build it into his cars? The patent is the very reason why this new technology came into existence, and if you use the innovation without purchasing the license, you are stealing the intellectual property, it's that simple. With music, I think, it is on the middle of these two extremes (Concerts as an alternative source of income etc.). Which makes the case complicated. I think copying a (whole) CD and scanning the cover is certainly beyond the thin red line, but, as others have said before, there are cases where the benefits weight out moral objections. For example if you make a promo compilation for a friend. This amounts to a solution which resembles the legal solution for using samples on your record. There's a certain length up to which it is free, and beyond this you have to pay, both for legal and moral reasons. If you arrange, you share the royalities with the composer. But if you copy the style of someone, royalities are still yours... Well, these are practical problems, and what to consider an intellectual property is always arbitrary to some degree, but this doesn't contradict the basic point. Fritz. ############################################## Fritz Feger mail@fritzfeger.de www.fritzfeger.de Fon: 0177 - 6424 020 Fax: 0721 - 151 435 058 Rüttenscheider Str. 253 Eulenstraße 56 45131 Essen 22765 Hamburg 0201 - 455 4555 040 - 3980 4766 ##############################################