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Editor -- Attorney Robin Gross is right to draw a distinction between copyright infringement and stealing ("Use of Napster Raises Ethical Issues", Feb. 8). Copyright is not about creators' property rights. Rather, it is a public subsidy created by government to accomplish a particular social objective -- subsidizing creative work. Ignoring copyrights by making unauthorized copies is often illegal, but it isn't the same as theft. Some copyright holders have called copyright infringers "thieves" who deprive them of their "property"; in reality, those infringers are just evading a public subsidy. There is no serious suggestion in the history of U.S. copyright law that authors and artists "own" their works, as property; instead, they enjoy a legal right to restrict some third parties' actions, as a temporary, artificial monopoly. Copyright infringement is its own category of infraction, created by legislators as an instrument of social policy, and has no connection with real theft. It should be thought of as something closer to tax evasion. Seth Schoen