Piracy, Intellectual Property

Piracy and Theft

One type of intellectual property offense is piracy. Piracy is a violation of copyright law; it involves the unauthorized acquisition, reproduction, distribution, or performance of a creative work. Some people limit the definition of piracy to misuse that is willful and oriented toward financial gain—purely criminal violations of copyright. Other people, including most copyright owners, embrace a more expansive view, regarding piracy as virtually any unauthorized use of a creative work. For example, the Software and Information Industry Association defines piracy as [Page 662]“the unauthorized use of software.” It includes downloading a legitimate copy of software onto multiple computers, producing and distributing copies from a legitimate source, renting software without permission, and exchanging software on the Internet without permission.

Although copyright owners commonly characterize piracy as theft, these actions differ in several ways. They differ in the nature of the victim's loss. In theft, the offender acquires a physical object and thus deprives the victim of that object. In piracy, the offender misuses an intellectual object and thus deprives the victim of an opportunity to profit from the use of that object. Unlike a customary form of property, a creative work is both nonexclusive (it can be in many places at the same time) and inexhaustible (use does not deplete it). Misuse, then, does not deprive the victim of the object; a person can obtain a sound recording, reproduce it, and disseminate copies without touching the master. Rather, misuse threatens the victim's capacity to exploit the object fully, a loss that is less certain and less tangible than the loss typically suffered by victims of theft.

...