Further to this. Theft has a clear legal meaning. For example in the UK stealing a car is technically difficult to prove since proving intent to permanently deprive is not very easy. This does not stop a law against taking a car without the owners consent which is then punished appropriately.
Well a few minutes with google and wikipedia will set you straight on this. Actually that your legally wrong insistence that copyright infringement is theft actually damages your copyright maximalist stance in the eyes of both legal precedent and public opinion. NB I don't argue that copyright infringement should be legal -- merely that is is a different class of crime than theft.
I have first hand experience of your car theft analogy, my car was stolen and, luckily enough for me, recovered along with the thieves. They were successfully prosecuted. You are, yet again, wrong.
You are quite slow to grasp simple concepts aren't you.
The car theft example is not an analogy it is a fact. I never said that taking a car is legal. However, the crime is "taking without permission" not "theft" (although it is I admit often referred to as theft in common parlance). This is because theft has a clear long standing meaning which for various reasons is often difficult to establish for cars. Therefore a new type of crime (which happens to have the same punishment) was created.
The point about how stupid you copyright maximalists sound to the general public when about software 'theft' stands. You weaken you position when you do so and make yourselves subject to ridicule.
Your comment ought to be flagged, but for some reason cannot be done by me. You have gone too far. Not only are you wrong, you are being obnoxious, rude and cowardly. I guarantee that you wouldn't dare speak like that to anyone you were in front of. Just another cowardly nerd hiding behind a screen.
You're right that what that user did was not ok. Unfortunately comments like this one just compound the problem. When you can't flag a comment, someone else probably will. Or you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com. But please resist getting into a personal spat.
Everyone in this thread was at fault. You can't post things like "Did it blow your mind when you understood something for a change" here. HN's rules hold regardless of how provocative someone else may have been.
We all lose it on the internet sometimes. On HN the thing to do is recognize that you broke the rules, stop blaming the other person for it, and move on.
The I-merely defense ("I was merely X-ing, but they were Y-ing") doesn't work. You can, and people do, justify anything that way.
Please re-read my comments on this thread and others on this article you will find that I've actually been very patiently trying to explain some simple concepts -- to someone that repeatedly swore, accused me of criminal activity, wilfully misinterpreted me and raged at me. I said nothing that I would not have said IRL even when I did eventually descend to sarcasm in respond to the personal attacks.
