New Age Piratism. CREDIT: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zharth/3379104454/" target="blank">zharth</a>
New Age Piratism. CREDIT: zharth

Law Professor Stuart Green on Property Law

Jun 8, 2012

A meme about illegal music downloads has been going around the Internet for a few years now. It goes something like this: Piracy isn't theft. Theft removes the original. Piracy makes a copy. Is there something to this idea?

A meme about illegal music downloads has been going around the Internet for a few years now. It goes something like this: Piracy isn't theft. Theft removes the original. Piracy makes a copy.

Stuart Green, from Rutgers Law School, thinks that there's something to the idea that the strict legal definition of theft doesn't really capture what's going on in music piracy and other forms of intellectual property rights infringement. Green thinks revisions to the law that lumped together many different kinds of theft have resulted in a system that doesn't match people's intuitions about the moral distinctions between kinds of takings of property.

To read the interview transcript, please download the document below.

You may also like

Stock ticker

MAR 20, 2026 Article

Zero Introspection

The rejection of introspection and moral duties by America's business leaders—combined with an unwillingness to defend the very system that incubated their success—is ...

Joel Rosenthal & Mark Hertling.

MAR 13, 2026 Video

Character and Leadership: A Conversation with Lt. General (ret.) Mark Hertling

Mark Hertling discusses U.S. foreign policy, the release of his new book, and the moral-political fork in the road in America in 2026.

CREDIT: IMDB/Warner Bros. Pictures.

MAR 10, 2026 Article

Ethics on Film: Discussion of "One Battle After Another"

This review of Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-winning "One Battle After Another" discusses gender roles, white supremacy, and the motivations of revolutionaries.

Not translated

This content has not yet been translated into your language. You can request a translation by clicking the button below.

Request Translation