A pirated copy doesn’t need to equate to a lost sale in order for it to be stealing. You took something of value that was created or owned by someone else. Whether it’s a physical or nonphysical good is completely beside the point.
That's also wrong. What actually happened is that a database of password hashes was _copied_ not stolen. So yes your password wasn't stolen.
The problem is a security/privacy problem. If someone made a copy of your house keys, that's a problem, because now they can enter your house. But they didn't steal your keys, they copied them. Same with the password. They didn't steal your password, but they have a copy, so they can use it to log into your accounts.
Though in fact sometimes things can be stolen via identity theft; in particular if someone abuses your credit it can deny you future credit, so they have stolen the good-will or trust of creditors in that case. This would be an example of an intangible good being stolen.
A person who creates or owns a piece of information still has it after you "steal" it. That's the difference between a physical and a nonphysical good.
(I'm not saying distributing copies of copyrighted works is automatically OK, just that your justification for it not being OK doesn't hold water).
That's why there's a specific offence of "Taking Without Owner's Consent" when you steal a car to joyride in (and crash and burn, rather than sell on): otherwise it's too easy to claim you only "borrowed" the car and intended to give it back, at which point it's not a crime any more.
That doesn't mean that it is right. Piracy is still wrong even though it is not stealing.
And the GP seems morally confused. Sharing FLOSS software is very very different morally to pirating games.
Why would one want to take away the opium from the masses?
You obviously can't afford Final Fantasy 7 or Megaman Legends so by deriving pleasure from an unauthorized copy, you are a thief and lacking in moral fiber Sir!
Really? So they no longer have it, because I took theirs?
Or, do they still have their copy, and I have mine, and I didn't take anything that was owned by them?
If I make an exact copy of your car and drive off in it, are you gonna complain that I stole your car?
A very odd mindset, but one I encounter frequently.
They did this class in my kid’s 5th grade where someone came in and said making tapes was illegal. And asked about parents who copied stuff. I was so pissed but the school got a tv or DVD player or something stupid.
If I make a copy you may value that, but the copy doesn’t deprive you of anything. What if you whistle a tune and I think about it? I’ve deprived you of value you by paying nothing but thinking of your whistled tune over and over.
I don’t think it’s an accepted truth that just because someone creates something that they must be compensated. Especially if it costs money for society to enforce.
There’s tons of these mental exercises. If I add a TOS to this comment saying it’s worth $1k and by reading, you must pay; do you owe? Did you steal my value without my consent?
That’s why stealing is based on clear harm through depriving of property. And fair use was established to allow reasonable noncommercial use.
My biggest complaint is that IP maximalism is not something society as a whole agreed to. It seems that IP holders just decided for society.
By this definition every website you visit on the internet that you did not create yourself is stealing.
If I took your journal entries from your room, and copied them all, and put them on the internet - that's not stealing, because I returned the journal? No, that's still theft.
If someone stole bread, how would you feel about It? Screw that person right? What if they were stealing the bread from someone who would never notice the loss, and it was for their hungry kids? Suddenly it seems more reasonable.
So both of these examples show (pretty goddamn clearly) that the whole "it isn't depriving the original owner of a physical item" thing is total, and absolute, hogwash. Clearly that point is totally irrelevant to ownership.
No, that's merely duplication and proliferation of media and information into the public domain; information wants to be free & media calls for an audience. The sole concern at that point would be how you gained access to the media - did you cause any provable harm? In other words, let's say you're my friend. You come in to my room, I leave my journal entries open and you surreptitiously copy them while I'm getting coffee for us. You leave the journal undamaged and make your duplicates public. The only harm you did was cause me to not trust you personally and no longer allow you in my home. If, on the other hand, you broke into my home, causing real physical damage in some way, as well as making me fear for my own personal wellbeing, then yes, you have provably harmed me in a legally actionable way.
In either case, nothing was stolen. Emotional and in the latter case physical damages were done because you have duplicated personal information without my consent. A piece of released or published software is decidedly not personal information. In fact, the number of abstraction layers between a user and the creator(s) of a game usually mean that pirated copies cause no emotional harm whatsoever to the author(s).
> If someone stole bread, how would you feel about It? Screw that person right? What if they were stealing the bread from someone who would never notice the loss, and it was for their hungry kids? Suddenly it seems more reasonable.
If you are depriving someone of a basic foodstuff, and their only means of procurement and providence is legally labelled as theft, then you are perpetrating an unjust society. That's my opinion on that.
That's not even remotely true (incidentally this would be illegal in the UK and a court would grant an injunction on publication under breach of confidence, precisely because it's such a shitty thing to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_Englis...).
Yes but they would not charge you with theft. Which includes "the intention to permanently deprive"...
Copying someone's private data is not theft. That doesn't mean that it is morally or legally OK (it's not - it's another crime). It just means that theft is a specific crime based on taking fungible chattel with the intent to not give it back.
IANAL - but I don't think this would fly in any jurisdiction anywhere. Is this definition specific to a country whose laws I'm not familiar with?
Theft in law generally only applies to tangible personal property, not intangible personally property and not real property. That's not a redefinition, just the long-existigng definition.
I never said that copyright infringement or copying and publishing personal data is OK morally or legally. I just said that they are different crimes.
That's a nice bumper sticker, but also a bunch of shit.
So the nudes you take with your wife, demand to be free and an audience? The photos of your children in the tub demand to be free, and an...audience? Reality doesn't fit on a bumper sticker.
"If you are depriving someone of a basic foodstuff, and their only means of procurement and providence is legally labelled as theft, then you are perpetrating an unjust society."
Oh right, so every society that's ever existed. Gotcha. Glad that doesn't happen on whatever planet you live on.
If I have them stored via digital media and don't provide it with significant forms of security, then yes - and it's my own shame if something "goes wrong". Besides, why would I take pictures or video of that if I wasn't going to look at them later? That's part of why I never got up in arms about the Apple photo breach; people stored images on a remote server whose security they were unable to monitor.
> Oh right, so every society that's ever existed. Gotcha. Glad that doesn't happen on whatever planet you live on.
Never said there's been a just society so far.
Yes, the original taking of the journal is literally depriving someone else of their object. A future return of the object clearly does not mean the original deprivation never happened. The point you're making about unauthorized distribution of private thoughts is about violation of privacy. Violating a person's privacy certainly is a bad thing. Theft is a different bad thing. (The analogy you're looking for is copying someone's paywalled blog)
"If someone stole bread, how would you feel about It? Screw that person right? What if they were stealing the bread from someone who would never notice the loss, and it was for their hungry kids? Suddenly it seems more reasonable."
You're trying to move the goalposts by conflating the literal deprivation of objects with copying information that all parties are trying to proliferate. The emotional appeal, besides not being as agreeable as you think, has nothing to do with the issue. A plentiful, though limited resource is just that. (Yes, one of the many reasons theft is bad is because it invariably angers the thieved and violates their sense of justice - the difference in argument is postulating the emotional impact of an action vs instructing the reader to feel a certain emotion).
Also, people are convinced by arguments they have an emotional connection to - not postulates. You're always instructing the reader how to feel - if the reader can't see what you're doing, and still consider your argument, they're uneducated. That's no sleight against them - as it is massively effective, and it is not permanent. Look at the last US election.
I have a rough understanding of human persuasion and decision making. Persuasion is not my goal. I am trying to engage with other people, read their knowledge and opinions, compare those to what I understand about reality, express my understanding, and when there are inconsistencies, attempt resolving them with some combination of verification of facts and revealing of core principles. Often times, this leads to me realize I had an incorrect thought about something, so I update my understanding of the world accordingly.