First, my apologies, I just realized that I was confusing "trademark" with "copyright" which is a different matter entirely. However, I do still believe that copyright should be reasonably enforced:
And i guess it would become criminal fraud only where the readers are asked to pay for the erroneously labeled bootleg product (or in other ways suffer damages...
Not unless the buyer did not get what he paid for.
Bob wants to buy Debbie Does Dishes. The bootlegger sells him a pirated copy of Debbie Does Dishes. Not actionable by the buyer, because no damages. He wanted Debbie Does Dishes; he got Debbie Does Dishes.
Bob wants to buy Debbie Does Dishes. The bootlegger sells him a pirated copy of The Little Mermaid. He paid for something and did not get it. Assuming the other 8 elements are present, Bob was defrauded out of the purchase price of Debbie Does Dishes.
However, there is a reasonable assumption on the part of the buyer that some part of his purchase price is making it back to the original author when he buys an item. Whether this is done as a lump sum or as micropayments is immaterial to this assumption: part of what the end user is buying is the knowledge that he is supporting the original author.
violation of copyright is essentially fraud: falsely claiming that a different company or author is the source of the material.
No. Publishing your novel while claiming that I wrote it is fraud. Publishing your novel without your permission while making it clear that you are the author is not fraud but is copyright violation.
Yes, you're right. But in the case of copyright violation, not fraud, what is the actual harm to the author? Sure, the author isn't making any money off a novel that was published without his knowledge or permission (unless of course, the publisher decides to pay the author something anyway), but that's not really "harm" as I understand it.
So, if you grow an acre of corn, and I come take half and sell it and refuse to pay you for your corn, or the labor that went into growing it, that's ok? Theft is theft just because you're stealing a book instead of food or guns, or anything else for sale, that doesn't make it any less than theft. As a writer, I work hard to produce the stories I write. I'm entitled to enjoy the fruits of my labors. So are you with your hypothetical corn. I won't take your stuff, please don't try to justify stealing mine, or Sandy's or L. Neil Smiths, or any other author.
Heh. I should have expected this response.
First of all, I was asking, not trying to make a particular point. There may indeed be something wrong with taking the results of someone else's efforts and profiting from it without their permission. But exactly and explicitly what is it that's wrong with it? That's what I'm trying to clarify. Again, no actual harm has been done to that person. They're merely not being paid for their efforts. No one has a right to be paid for their efforts. If you write a book that no one wants to pay for, no rights-violation has taken place. If I re-publish your book without your permission, and no one buys my edition of your book, meaning I make no profit off of it, has something wrong still been done to you? Or does the alleged harm only occur if I profit from your efforts?
But your example is clearly not analogous, because there is an actual, physical product that has been stolen from the owner, regardless of the amount of effort that the corn grower has gone to, he clearly owned the corn and the land that the corn was grown on. Theft and trespassing have clearly taken place.
Theft and trespassing hasn't necessarily take place if someone gets a copy of a book and then re-publishes it. The author still has their original manuscript or file on their computer, and if the book is publicly available, then no trespass was necessary to get a copy of it.
Some responses:
clearly, your profit is not needed for theft to occur: it is still theft if you steal my wallet and throw it in the garbage, since your actions have directly harmed me.
Even if you give it away for free, you have still stolen potential sales of my book. It may be difficult to quantify this damage, but in principle it is there. However, that does just mean one more item for the arbitration to consider.
Effectively, your argument is that "I did not destroy your usage of it, so I did not really take it." However, your usage of it did degrade my usage of it. Otherwise, we would not have created things like guild secrets and eventually patents and copyrights. If you took some action that harmed my crops, such as releasing your pesticide intentionally where you knew it would cause me to not be able to label it organic anymore, that is a clear violation of my rights.
