There is a very substantial difference: Copyright infringement does not deprive the creator of the original work, unlike theft which does.
Historically this difference is highly noticeable: Property rights to physical items and land have existed pretty much as long as humanity to various extents, even in societies with no formal concepts of jurisprudence and no centralised enforcement. It has been codified in laws pretty much as far back as we have records - the first codified property laws are more than 4000 years old.
While copyright came into being as an Act of Parliament with the Statute of Anne in 1710, which was an explicit restriction of rights, and it took a further 150 years or so to solidify the modern copyright system, because it was essentially all invented from scratch with no basis in previous human history. Most of these efforts explicitly recognised copyright as a bargain where the public gave up rights, while property law has systematically been justified with the idea of a natural right to control that which you can physically possess and protect.
Incidentally I believe property rights are too extensive too, and e.g. in Norway where I'm from there are substantial ancient exceptions from private property rights (on the basis that too extensive property rights also involves the public surrendering freedoms) - the "freedom to roam" ("allemannsretten"), but historically they are still of a fundamentally different character in that at least the underlying concept of property law basically devolves to the idea that someone does not have the right - though the may have the power - to deprive you of access to that which you physically possess.
> And the way to handle this is to lobby to get the right redefined to have the sort of scope you want.
Meanwhile most people are not interested in a crusade - they just want to go on with their lives, and carry out actions they largely don't see as morally wrong. History is full of laws that have fallen because enforcement became impossible due to total public disregard for the law.
> The "abused their position" canard is becoming toothless in the face of how much money is on the opposition side now
As long as the copyright terms are as long as they are, the DMCA is still on the books in the US, and sites like Youtube enforce far stricter standards than they are legally obliged to, it is by no means toothless.
> The lobbying dollars are there to weaken copyright protections to give these distributors a better negotiating position.
Of your two examples, one (Apple) has a strong self-serving interest in protecting copyright, and the other is a site run by a company with a strong self-serving interest in protecting copyright, thanks to iTunes and the Play store respectively. I don't see why you believe that either Apple, Google or similar companies have much to win by lobbying for weaker copyright protections. Nor have I seen any kind of evidence that they do.
> It's a hard political sell because in the U.S. we just believe in really strong protections for property rights.
Copyright is not a property right, no matter how many times they repeat the term "intellectual property". Copyright law exists in the first place exactly because property law fundamentally is based on the concept of possession. Copying does not remove possession of anything, and so it could not be a violation of property rights.
And the extent of piracy in the US too demonstrates quite well that whether or not people think it is "right" in abstract terms, a substantial proportion of the population does not consider it wrong enough to stop participating in it. Copying and sharing has been an ingrained part of human culture since before written history. In fact, large parts of human culture throughout history has depended on widespread copying and sharing.
So on hand, the historical state has been one of freely copying and sharing, while on the other hand the historical state has been one of rapid and continuous strengthening of enforcement of physical property rights. The two are about as opposite as they can get.
> We like our property rights absolute
Not even the US has property rights that are anywhere near absolute. Try erecting a ten story building on the plot of your suburban house without applying for planning permissions and fighting all your neighbours. Try buying a house right in the path of a long planned road and fight the application of eminent domain. Try starting a brothel most places. Or dumping hazardous chemicals. Or refusing black people access to your store.
Many US states further have exceptions that limit your ability to even prevent access to your property in certain situations - e.g. you may not be able to prevent access to the shore-line.
Your freedoms and rights to do things with your property are continuously weighed against and limited by the concerns for the freedoms and rights of others. Your property ownership does not exempt you from business regulations, or anti-discrimination laws or environmental regulations or a whole host of other laws and regulations that limits what you can do to or on your property.
And that is the one thing that brings property rights closest to copyright laws: They both reflect tradeoffs between the freedom and rights of the public and freedom and rights of the owner.
> There is a very substantial difference: Copyright infringement does not deprive the creator of the original work, unlike theft which does.
Copyright infringement is more like trespass than theft, but trespass is a property concept as well. You've mis-characterized property law here. A property right isn't just about possession, it's the right to exclude. It doesn't just keep you from dispossessing me of my land, but allows me to arbitrarily exclude you from it, even in situations where your use of my property doesn't cause me any loss or deprivation.
> While copyright came into being as an Act of Parliament with the Statute of Anne in 1710
Before the Statute of Anne, operating a printing press require a royal license, so large-scale copying wasn't possible. In other words, copying has been restricted almost since the technology has existed to allow it.
> while property law has systematically been justified with the idea of a natural right to control that which you can physically possess and protect.
Yet we consider it a crime to engage in activities like embezzlement, which specifically involve money or property you do not physically possess. This is quite an unnatural concept if you think about it: you give someone else possession and control of property, then expect the government to intervene if they use it in a way different than you intended? That has no natural analogue and is indeed relatively novel in the history of criminal law.
> I don't see why you believe that either Apple, Google or similar companies have much to win by lobbying for weaker copyright protections. Nor have I seen any kind of evidence that they do.
Google, and Apple, as content distributors, have a great incentive for copyright to be weak, which gives them more leverage in negotiating with content companies. Google and Apple would love not to have to pay for the content that appears in the iTunes or Play stores.
> Copyright is not a property right, no matter how many times they repeat the term "intellectual property". Copyright law exists in the first place exactly because property law fundamentally is based on the concept of possession. Copying does not remove possession of anything, and so it could not be a violation of property rights.
Property does not require possession of anything, nor can they only be violated by dispossessing someone of something. Someone walking onto my property without permission does not dispossess me of it, but is a violation of my property right. Abstract concepts like transferable contractual obligations are also property rights.
> Not even the US has property rights that are anywhere near absolute.
I mean "absolute" in the sense that property law rejects the idea of sharing. Say I have a big plot of land that I don't live on or use for anything. Some people come along and camp in it. The value they gain from camping is greater than the loss to me of the use of land I never use anyway. Property law does not consider that. It gives me the right to exclude people from the property. The government is of course empowered to regulate my usage of my property, but other individuals can't raise "the public good" as a defense to infringement of my property rights. They can't say "this benefits the public a lot more than it hurts the owner."
> weighed against and limited by the concerns for the freedoms and rights of others.
If you think about it, the fact that you can't cut across someone's land is a much bigger infringement to "natural freedom" than the fact you can't copy someone's song. At least the song is something that is the product of its creator. It wouldn't have existed without an act of creation. But the land is natural. It's the earth. It existed long before any property owner ever laid claim to it. Yet, we very strongly defend the right of people to exclude other people from patches of earth they didn't even create. So is it surprising that we have strong protections to allow people to exclude others from works they did create?
"copyright infringement is trespass" is just as bad as "copyright infringement is theft"
Theft denies the owner their rightful property.
Trespass denies or restricts the owner the use of their rightful property.
Copyright Infringement does not, on its own[1], does not stop the rights-holder[2] from using their copy.
The important distinction here - that is often conspicuously avoided by people that attempt to conflate copyright infringement and theft - is scarcity. Physical goods are scarce, so we invented laws to discourage theft. Land is scarce, so we invented laws to discourage trespass. Copyright, on the other hand, was enacted not out of fear of losing a scarce resource; we hoped it would give society faster/better access to "science and the useful arts".
As an investment, it is something society may decide it to stop paying for (i.e. no longer providing the temporary monopoly). People hoping to exploit such monopolies should really keep that in mind, because society may choose to invest in something else if their investment isn't providing adequate returns (access).
[1] If I have to invade your property to do the copying, I could probably be charged with both copyright infringement and trespass. The two activities are still distinct; they just happen to occur at roughly the same time.
[2] "owner" isn't really appropriate when speaking of copyright infringement, for the same reasons. You don't "own" the abstract concept behind a work, you only own a particular instance.
Historically this difference is highly noticeable: Property rights to physical items and land have existed pretty much as long as humanity to various extents, even in societies with no formal concepts of jurisprudence and no centralised enforcement. It has been codified in laws pretty much as far back as we have records - the first codified property laws are more than 4000 years old.
While copyright came into being as an Act of Parliament with the Statute of Anne in 1710, which was an explicit restriction of rights, and it took a further 150 years or so to solidify the modern copyright system, because it was essentially all invented from scratch with no basis in previous human history. Most of these efforts explicitly recognised copyright as a bargain where the public gave up rights, while property law has systematically been justified with the idea of a natural right to control that which you can physically possess and protect.
Incidentally I believe property rights are too extensive too, and e.g. in Norway where I'm from there are substantial ancient exceptions from private property rights (on the basis that too extensive property rights also involves the public surrendering freedoms) - the "freedom to roam" ("allemannsretten"), but historically they are still of a fundamentally different character in that at least the underlying concept of property law basically devolves to the idea that someone does not have the right - though the may have the power - to deprive you of access to that which you physically possess.
> And the way to handle this is to lobby to get the right redefined to have the sort of scope you want.
Meanwhile most people are not interested in a crusade - they just want to go on with their lives, and carry out actions they largely don't see as morally wrong. History is full of laws that have fallen because enforcement became impossible due to total public disregard for the law.
> The "abused their position" canard is becoming toothless in the face of how much money is on the opposition side now
As long as the copyright terms are as long as they are, the DMCA is still on the books in the US, and sites like Youtube enforce far stricter standards than they are legally obliged to, it is by no means toothless.
> The lobbying dollars are there to weaken copyright protections to give these distributors a better negotiating position.
Of your two examples, one (Apple) has a strong self-serving interest in protecting copyright, and the other is a site run by a company with a strong self-serving interest in protecting copyright, thanks to iTunes and the Play store respectively. I don't see why you believe that either Apple, Google or similar companies have much to win by lobbying for weaker copyright protections. Nor have I seen any kind of evidence that they do.
> It's a hard political sell because in the U.S. we just believe in really strong protections for property rights.
Copyright is not a property right, no matter how many times they repeat the term "intellectual property". Copyright law exists in the first place exactly because property law fundamentally is based on the concept of possession. Copying does not remove possession of anything, and so it could not be a violation of property rights.
And the extent of piracy in the US too demonstrates quite well that whether or not people think it is "right" in abstract terms, a substantial proportion of the population does not consider it wrong enough to stop participating in it. Copying and sharing has been an ingrained part of human culture since before written history. In fact, large parts of human culture throughout history has depended on widespread copying and sharing.
So on hand, the historical state has been one of freely copying and sharing, while on the other hand the historical state has been one of rapid and continuous strengthening of enforcement of physical property rights. The two are about as opposite as they can get.
> We like our property rights absolute
Not even the US has property rights that are anywhere near absolute. Try erecting a ten story building on the plot of your suburban house without applying for planning permissions and fighting all your neighbours. Try buying a house right in the path of a long planned road and fight the application of eminent domain. Try starting a brothel most places. Or dumping hazardous chemicals. Or refusing black people access to your store.
Many US states further have exceptions that limit your ability to even prevent access to your property in certain situations - e.g. you may not be able to prevent access to the shore-line.
Your freedoms and rights to do things with your property are continuously weighed against and limited by the concerns for the freedoms and rights of others. Your property ownership does not exempt you from business regulations, or anti-discrimination laws or environmental regulations or a whole host of other laws and regulations that limits what you can do to or on your property.
And that is the one thing that brings property rights closest to copyright laws: They both reflect tradeoffs between the freedom and rights of the public and freedom and rights of the owner.