Don’t "Steal" Music

I took this screen shot from the help screen in iTunes 5.0 this morning.

It irritates me that Apple doesn’t know the difference between theft and copyright infringement. They are not the same thing – I’m not saying that copyright infringement is ok, but I am saying copyright infringement does NOT equal stealing, and people shouldn’t equate it with theft.

Here’s a little analogy I just came up with – I don’t know how good it is, but here it is: If someone were to steal your homework and hand it in – that would be theft. You would be left without something that you previously had. Infringement, on the other hand, is more like – if that same person copied your homework and handed it in. You might not like it, but you wouldn’t have been robbed of anything. There is a big difference.