No one has the right to someone else's IP. If Disney decides to pull all their shows and shut down then there could be no legal way to watch it other than pre-existing DVDs/BluRay.
The issue at hand is the absence of a legal owner. It should fall into a commons for public use until someone can prove ownership. Eg. abandonware.
I normally agree, but in this case the three companies in question aren't refusing to sell, they're threatening to sue if someone does anything with something that they have no idea if they even have rights to.
If nobody has the de facto rights, them there's nobody to steal it from.
"Not knowing if you own the IP" doesn't mean "you don't own the IP." Doesn't change the theft. But does make a argument that companies, with no interest in selling a media, should think about giving it away.
It's not stealing if you make a copy and no-one is deprived of their copy. I hate the way the copyright holders have pushed the "copying is theft" narrative so much that people have internalised it.
It is though, because no one is a victim in that transaction. Nobody lost anything and nobody suffered any loss of potential profit because they actively refused said profit.
I'm not fussed about how it sounds (or whether it appeals to your sense of justice), but it's a case of using the correct words. Stealing/theft involves intentionally depriving someone of the object and that's clearly not what happens when someone makes a copy.
Personally, I am not a fan of "intellectual property" laws such as copyrights and patents as their original intention doesn't seem relevant anymore and instead they've become a tool of corporations to increase their profits (often at the expense of the creative people that actually produce the works). Copyright only works properly when the creative works get released into the public domain and that is not going to happen with NOLF (and a lot of computer games) and so the public are being denied their side of the copyright deal.
"It's not copyright infringement if it's never going to be released into the public domain in a usable form" would be a better statement of my thinking.
No one has the right to someone else's IP. If Disney decides to pull all their shows and shut down then there could be no legal way to watch it other than pre-existing DVDs/BluRay.
The issue at hand is the absence of a legal owner. It should fall into a commons for public use until someone can prove ownership. Eg. abandonware.
I normally agree, but in this case the three companies in question aren't refusing to sell, they're threatening to sue if someone does anything with something that they have no idea if they even have rights to.
If nobody has the de facto rights, them there's nobody to steal it from.
"Not knowing if you own the IP" doesn't mean "you don't own the IP." Doesn't change the theft. But does make a argument that companies, with no interest in selling a media, should think about giving it away.
It's not stealing if you make a copy and no-one is deprived of their copy. I hate the way the copyright holders have pushed the "copying is theft" narrative so much that people have internalised it.
"It's not illegal copying if you refuse to sell me a copy" doesn't really sound any better to me.
It is though, because no one is a victim in that transaction. Nobody lost anything and nobody suffered any loss of potential profit because they actively refused said profit.
I'm not fussed about how it sounds (or whether it appeals to your sense of justice), but it's a case of using the correct words. Stealing/theft involves intentionally depriving someone of the object and that's clearly not what happens when someone makes a copy.
Personally, I am not a fan of "intellectual property" laws such as copyrights and patents as their original intention doesn't seem relevant anymore and instead they've become a tool of corporations to increase their profits (often at the expense of the creative people that actually produce the works). Copyright only works properly when the creative works get released into the public domain and that is not going to happen with NOLF (and a lot of computer games) and so the public are being denied their side of the copyright deal.
"It's not copyright infringement if it's never going to be released into the public domain in a usable form" would be a better statement of my thinking.
Who is stealing what? Who is losing what because it was taken away? Am I stealing the Mona Lisa because I took a photo of it?