Copyright infringement

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it.

Related Topics:
Copyright - Exclusive right

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In many jurisdictions, such as the United States, copyright infringement is a strict liability tort or crime. This means that the plaintiff or prosecutor must only prove that the act of copying or actus reus was committed by the defendant, and need not prove mens rea. Good faith, standing alone, is no defense.

Related Topics:
United States - Strict liability - Tort - Crime - Plaintiff - Prosecutor - Actus reus - Defendant - Mens rea - Good faith

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For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is often referred to as piracy or theft (an early reference was made by Alfred Tennyson in the preface to his poem "The Lover's Tale" in 1879 where he mentions that sections of this work "have of late been mercilessly pirated".) The legal basis for this usage dates from the same era, and has been consistently applied until the present time.{{fn|1}} Critics of the use of "software piracy" to describe such practices contend that it unfairly compares a crime that makes no victim - except for those that would have profited from hypothetically lost sales - with the violent actions of organized thieves and murderers; it also confuses mere illegal copying of material with the intentional and malicious penetration of computer systems to which one does not legally have access. As a consequence, "software piracy" is a somewhat loaded term. "Theft" or "stealing" are considered even more inflammatory, as well as legally misleading.{{fn|2}}

Related Topics:
The Lover's Tale - Thieves - Murder

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