[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by dlavery

... Federal law certainly does consider them to be similar.

Specifically, the US Code, Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 506, subsection a: "Criminal Infringement. - Any person who infringes a copyright willfully [...] for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain [...] shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code." [which has to do with criminal theft]

And your first response will be "but I didn't download it for financial gain, so I am OK!" Not so fast. The No Electroinic Theft (NET) Act, passed into law by the U.S. Congress in 1997, was specifically targeted at actions like this.

US Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 101: "The term ''financial gain'' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works."

The NET Act directly links copyright infringement to physical-space theft, specifically shoplifting. The boundaries of criminal copyright infringement were signficantly expanded by the NET Act, and the penalties associated with it (in extreme cases up to $3,000,000 in fines and a year in Federal prison). Note that the NET Act also defines a link between the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials and the act of trafficking in counterfeit goods and services. In other words, piracy.

If piracy were theft in the traditional sense, no such laws would be necessary.