But this analogy overlooks the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be. Basing your thinking on this analogy is tantamount to ignoring that difference.
Not me, but rather the passage I quoted for your "entertainment.
Sorry, I missed that since I did not follow the link... but it certainly did entertain me :-)
"Intellectual property" rather is a term designed to protect the efforts of the producer who decides to devote them not to produce material objects but to create immaterial innovations. This is why patent laws exist; without them you wouldn't get most of the economy working, and many great inventions would have never seen the sunlight, as I mentioned some mails ago.
The passage I quoted took pains to distinguish copyright law and patent law.
I should have said something about this, yes. Those you quote are (see my last mail) caught up into a false disanalogy between material and intellectual property, and their trial to distinguish intellectual property and copyright suffers from this. I shall try to define copyright: To state that the copyright for the music on a CD you buy remains mine is to specify the utilisation contract (dunno the correct legal term in English...) between you and me. It means to restrict the rights on my intellectual property which you purchase in buying my CD to putting this CD into any CD player you like and play it as often and as loud as you want and to whomever you want, but not to multiply the medium and thereby to further broaden the circle of people using my intellectual property. The contract says that if a second copy is required, it has to be purchased again from me or my agent, e.g. my record label. The same with software and single vs. multiple user licenses. And there are further restrictions which are part of the deal and thus subject to copyright. If you like to broadcast a track of my CD, this also requires you to purchase a separate license because, again, this broadens the circle of possible users of my property.
And, as I also mentioned earlier, everyone who commits himself to cite other people's ideas rather than to pretend they're his thereby accepts the concept of intellectual property. Well, they accept the concept of both copyright law and the more banal point of noting sources for the sake of a reader's research and also to avoid being accused of plagiarism.
And I define plagiarism: theft of intellectual property in the special case that I claim or imply that someone else's intellectual property is mine. To be distinguished from copyright violation where I do not make such a claim but distribute someone's intellectual property further than my contract with the owner allows for. To add my 5 cent to the question if copyright violation is theft: it is not taking away property from the legal owner, and thus not exactly theft, but it is still a violation of property rights, which implies that any moral differences between theft (of material or intellectual property) and copyright violation are hard to argue for. Greetings; 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 ##############################################