Sorry for the delay.

Any interference? In that case, I’ll be sure to call the police the next time that a blackout causes me to lose my unsaved computer files. I’d love to see some case cites and statutory definitions for this.

I didn’t mean that any interference whatsoever is actionable as theft, conversion, or trespass to chattels. What I meant is that the concept of theft is broader than larceny and can include interferences with rights and benefits, i.e., intangible interests.

AFAIK theft typically involves unlawful taking and the intent to deprive the owner of the thing taken.

That’s the definition of larceny: unlawful dispossession plus intent to deprive. But look, for example, at the Restatement’s definition of trespass to chattel:

One who commits a trespass to a chattel is subject to liability to the possessor of the chattel if, but only if, (a) he dispossesses the other of the chattel, or (b) the chattel is impaired as to its condition, quality, or value . . . .

Restatement (Second) of Torts ? 218 (1965).

Trespass to chattel and conversion are the civil law counterparts to theft, the difference being that it’s strict liability and there is no intent element. Subpart (a) is the dispossession that you’re referring to when you say unlawful taking. I’m talking about subpart (b) which states that it’s also a trespass to impair the chattel’s “condition, quality, or value.” By violating one of the exclusive rights in a copyright, which is a chattel, see Black’s Law Dictionary (9th ed. 2009) (“personal chattel” is a “tangible good or an intangible right (such as a patent).”), one is impairing the value of that copyright. That’s a trespass.

You can interfere with a copyright by infringing, but you can’t take it or deprive the owner of it at all easily. Indeed, the copyright remains good and perhaps even uninfringed upon against the rest of the world, even if you do infringe.

I think you can easily dispossess someone of their copyright. For example, I can file a fraudulent assignment with the Copyright Office claiming that I have legal title to someone else’s copyright. That would be a conversion. See, e.g., Kremen v. Cohen, 337 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2003) (holding that a domain name can be the object of conversion). But what I’m talking about with infringement is not the taking of legal title. Rather, it’s the taking of one of the intangible benefits of ownership that lessens the value of the copyright.

I quoted this above: Property “is intended to embrace every species of valuable right and interest and whatever tends in any degree, no matter how small, to deprive one of that right, or interest, deprives him of his property.” People ex rel. Short v. Warden of City Prison, 145 A.D. 861, 863 (1911) aff’d, 206 N.Y. 632, 99 N.E. 1116 (1912) (discussing extortion under New York law). Infringement deprives someone of an interest in their copyright. If you infringe my copyright, you’ve taken something of value from me since you didn’t pay for a license.

No, what the government was trying to do in Dowling was to say that because the physical copies being transported were pirated copies, they were for that reason alone stolen under the meaning of the Act.

Right. And that reinforces my point that the particular copies being transported weren’t stolen property. That does nothing to disprove my argument that interests in the copyright were nonetheless stolen. Those interests, being intangible, can’t be possessed for purposes of a possession of stolen property statute.

Tangibility isn’t the key — the statute prohibits transferring stolen money in interstate commerce, but this needn’t be done with bundles of banknotes.

The statute says “transports, transmits, or transfers.” If the money is in physical form, such as cash, bond, or check, then the “transports” prong would apply. If it involves a wire transfer, then the “transmits” or “transfers” prong would apply. The issue in Dowling was as to tangible property, so the “transports” prong was the issue. The things being transported were not the intangible rights that had been interfered with.

Let’s take a look at US v. Riggs (which people around here may remember as the infamous E911 case, that flopped in such a spectacular manner):

Neidorf also cites United States v. Smith, 686 F.2d 234 (5th Cir. 1982), to support his argument. Like Dowling, Smith held that copyright infringement is not the equivalent of theft or conversion under ? 2314. Id. at 241. The instant case, however, is distinguishable from Dowling and Smith. This case involves the transfer of confidential, proprietary business information, not copyrights. As Dowling and Smith recognized, the copyright holder owns only a bundle of intangible rights which can be infringed, but not stolen or converted. The owner of confidential, proprietary business information, in contrast, possesses something which has clearly been recognized as an item of property. Carpenter, 108 S. Ct. at 320; Keane, 852 F.2d at 205. As such, it is certainly capable of being misappropriated, which, according to the indictment, is exactly what happened to the information in Bell South’s E911 text file.

That’s not accurate. A copyright itself can be converted, such as by presenting the Copyright Office with a fraudulent assignment. Moreover, a copyright is a property right just the same as a trade secret or a right of publicity. An interest in a copyright can be misappropriated. We don’t call it theft because we already have another name for it–infringement.

Given that infringement wasn’t criminalized until late in the 19th century, I suspect, without having actually researched it, that it post dates that idea in other contexts, e.g. wire fraud.

Copyright infringement was criminalized in 1897, IIRC. What I meant though was that copyright infringement recognized that an interference in the intangible interests in a chattel could be actionable long before the modern notion of theft was adopted which includes the same idea.

Still, though, I think you’re over-reading Dowling, which look at the transportation of tangible objects, and not focusing on the modern definitions of trespass, conversion, or theft, which include interferences or devaluations of intangible rights and interests.

For example:

Courts have said that the word “property” is all-embracing so as to include every intangible benefit and prerogative susceptible of possession or disposition. The construction of the word “property” signifies any valuable right or interest protected by law. Making an unauthorized copy of a “borrowed” key, which is analogous to making an unauthorized copy of a trade secret or an unauthorized copy of computer data, destroys the intangible benefit and prerogative of being able to control access to one’s residence just as thoroughly as outright theft of the key itself.

People v. Kwok, 63 Cal. App. 4th 1236, 1250-51 (1998).

The modern notion of property is quite broad, referring to these intangible benefits and rights. And it follows that the modern notion of torts and crimes involving such property is also broad.