I was interested to read that Geoff Taylor of the British Phonographic Institute says that unauthorised copying of music is stealing (see [2005] Gazette, 10 March, 9). Try as I might I could find no reference to unauthorised copying of MP3s as theft or stealing in the Theft Acts or any criminal law textbook.

If file sharing were stealing then why were not the police and Crown Prosecution Service involved instead of an out-of-court settlement being reached? The answer is straightforward; it is not stealing. It may well be breaching the record company's copyright and therefore be actionable as a civil matter, which would seem to be the situation in this case.


I presume that it would be possible to share files in a way that would be an offence; but even if it were an offence, it would not be stealing.


The problem with calling it theft or stealing for a person to make an unauthorised copy is that it warps the debate about how copyrights should be managed and protected. Making a copy of a music file does not take from a record label anything that it had before. What it does is potentially reduce a company's ability commercially to exploit the file and reduces their control over it.


These are legitimate concerns but to label as thieves the people who are copying does not help the argument. Instead, it raises the emotional volume and so drowns out the legitimate arguments of those concerned about the increase in rights incrementally being granted to copyright holders and simultaneously taken away from their customers and the general public.




Michael Truscott, Kent County Council, Maidstone