"Piracy is theft" was a slogan used by UK non-profit organization FAST (Federation Against Software Theft). It was first used in the 1980s and has since then been used by other similar organisations such as

MPAA The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...

. It has also been used as a statement, although that has been challenged as being inaccurate. Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as theft, although such misuse has been rejected by legislatures and courts. In copyright law, infringement does not refer to theft of physical objects that take away the owner's possession, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization. Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

held in '' Dowling v. United States'' (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. Instead,

"interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft,
conversion Conversion or convert may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman'' * "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series * "The Conversion" ...
, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: ' ..an infringer of the copyright.'"

The court said that in the case of copyright infringement, the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law – certain

exclusive right In Anglo-Saxon law, an exclusive right, or exclusivity, is a de facto, non-tangible prerogative existing in law (that is, the power or, in a wider sense, right) to perform an action or acquire a benefit and to permit or deny others the right to p ...

s – is invaded, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.'' Dowling v. United States'' (1985), 473 U.S. 207, pp. 217–218.

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. ''Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.'', 464 U.S. 417 (1984), also known as the “Betamax case”, is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television s ...

Spin (public relations) In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about some organization or public figure. While traditional publi ...

* ''

Steal This Film ''Steal This Film'' is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property directed by Jamie King, produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol. Two parts, and one special The ...

'' *

The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...

* '' Who Makes Movies?'' * ''

You can click, but you can't hide "You can click, but you can't hide" is an advertising campaign run jointly by several international associations, most notably the MPAA (now the MPA) and the GVU, as part of the larger "Respect Copyrights" campaign against peer-to-peer file sharin ...

'' * ''

You Wouldn't Steal a Car "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" is the first sentence of a public service announcement created in July 2004, which was part of the anti-copyright infringement campaign "Piracy. It's a crime." It was created by the Federation Against Copyright Theft an ...

References

British political phrases British advertising slogans 1980s neologisms Copyright campaigns {{law-stub

See also

References