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Trespass is the usual legal analogy, since you’re effectively using someone else’s property without permission.



Except you're not. You're using a copy of their property without permission.

If I trespass into someone's house, it's invading their personal space. If they're in the house, it's invasive to them and alarming and would probably make them afraid that I intend violence. While in the house, I may damage things or cause disruption.

However, if I use a device to create an alternate universe with a perfect copy of their house, without them inside (since it's my own private universe), and then I enter the house and do whatever in it, I'm not disrupting them at all. I'm not inside their house, I'm in my own copy of it in my own universe, and they don't even know. It doesn't affect them at all.


It’s not a copy of the copyright itself. The trespass is on the copyright, not the copy.

The disruption the trespass causes is of their sole right to license that copyright.


That sounds like overloading of the term "trespass" to me. The common definition is to physically go to places where you're not allowed to be.


not overloaded, just an older (but official definition):

archaic•literary commit an offense against (a person or a set of rules).

But the word doesn't matter so much as the intent. If enough people just copy your product you cannot sell it. Or worse, others will sell it for pennies because they didn't spend any revenue so any money is profit. That's what's trying to be prevented.


I've been reading on the topic recently and that is referred to as "criminal trespass". I want to put up signs that say "yes trespassing"


But it's on a computer, so that would be hacking, which is much more serious.


The “property” being trespassed on refers to the IP not the medium it resides on. Unless you hacked someone’s computer to get access to that IP, which is a whole other matter.


Information isn’t and can’t be property.

If you disagree, then tell me who owns the number 2.




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