Will the Supreme Court Finally Declare Copyright Infringement As “Theft”?; The Hollywood Reporter, November 17, 2021

Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter; Will the Supreme Court Finally Declare Copyright Infringement As “Theft”?

"For quite some time, there’s been an esoteric debate running in intellectual property circles as to whether copyright infringement is best characterized as thievery. Those arguing against the proposition generally make the point that piracy is not stealing because the owner is not deprived of using the work. Under this view, copyright infringement is more tantamount to trespass. On the other side are those who think it matters not that intellectual property is an intangible something incapable of being physically controlled. To quote President Joe Biden, “Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft, and it should be dealt with accordingly.”"

Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books; The New York Times, June 1, 2020

Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times; Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books

Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Wiley accused the nonprofit of piracy for making over 1 million books free online.

"A group of publishers sued Internet Archive on Monday, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free electronic copies of books was robbing authors and publishers of revenue at a moment when it was desperately needed.

Internet Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available free online, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period of 14 days, according to the complaint. Then in March, the group said it would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.”

But many publishers and authors have called it something different: theft.

“There is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response. “They’ve stepped in downstream and taken the intellectual investment of authors and the financial investment of publishers, they’re interfering and giving this away.”"

WHAT IF ‘STAR TREK’ WERE FREE? HOW THE STORIED SCI-FI FRANCHISE COULD INSPIRE COPYRIGHT REFORM; Newsweek, March 5, 2018

Andrew Whalen, Newsweek; 

WHAT IF ‘STAR TREK’ WERE FREE? HOW THE STORIED SCI-FI FRANCHISE COULD INSPIRE COPYRIGHT REFORM

"CBS and Paramount are unlikely to see things the same way. While Star Trek: Discovery press releases trumpet the “ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers,” plans for streaming market domination depend upon exclusivity. The metaphor equating artistic expression and property has become so ingrained that companies regularly reduce their consumers to provisional licensees, subject to whatever controls the copyright holder decides upon, even long after the point of purchase.

“Star Trek stands on the shoulders of giants. It exists because they plundered some of the most interesting stories and memes of science fiction, just as all science fiction writers do, to tell their own story. And to argue that when they did it that was the legitimate progress of art and whenever anyone else does it, it's theft, is pretty self-serving and kind of obviously bullshit,” Doctorow said. “It's a ridiculous thing for a law to ban something that ancient and fundamental to how we experience art.”

Countering the monopoly exercised by copyright holders will require a broader social realignment, under which people come to understand art as a shared cultural endowment, rather than product—a mindset beyond capital."

Update Our Culture, Not Just Copyright Laws; New York Times, 3/17/15

M.K. Asante, New York Times; Update Our Culture, Not Just Copyright Laws:

"A much-needed change in copyright laws will certainly usher in a ton of new cases. Cases even more egregious and blatant than “Blurred Lines.” Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) reminds us in his song “Rock N Roll”:

You may dig on the Rolling Stones

But they ain't come up with that ... on they own

He was speaking about the dark history of copyright infringement, and often downright theft, from black musicians. The Rolling Stones biographer Stanley Booth described their music as “the songs of old black men too poor to put glass in their windows.""