He took away something so scarce it's irreplaceable: their secrecy/confidentiality. And if it wasn't for self-gain, who on Earth's gain was it? He committed a pre-meditated (for months) crime to fulfil his own whims.
One of the reasons I believe that is because the ramifications of making copies of someone else's information is not very obvious compared to taking away a physical object from them. When you take something tangible from someone it is immediately clear that the other person will be suffering a loss. However the act of looking at files stored in a remote server (and as a result creating copies) is much less obvious. I think it is very plausible that the kid was just trying to see the state/progress of the game that he has been anticipating so long for (4 years) and simply did not think about the ramification of his actions. This is totally different than the pre-meditation of a crime with the intention to put another party at harm. He has zero motivations to harm Valve. He sees them as his heroes and still is a big fan.
That's a different kind of self gain than the one I was talking about. There is no need to point out/talk about the one you mention - every action anyone does is/can be argued for self satisfaction/gain of some sort - since everyone does it already. Yes I agree with that one. However, the gain I'm talking about is taking away a physical object away from someone else for the sake of gaining possession of it. Again, this is not what motivated the kid to break in and obtain a copy of the source code. However this type of gain is exactly what motivated the guy from Roosevelt's story. My original reply was trying to point out this difference.
>...you cannot recognise the significance of actions beyond their physical consequences.
Yes I can. Not only I can, I am also making a distinction between the actions with obvious physical consequences and the actions with less/no obvious physical consequences. It is you who insist on generalizing the two into the same thing and cannot see the (somewhat subtle) difference.
>The only way he could fail to be aware of the negative repercussions is if he accidentally took the source code and thought it was something else. He clearly did know what the code was, its value and why it was protected...
I beg to differ. That is just one extreme way. It is definitely not the only way he could have failed to be aware of the negative ramification. This is where evaluating his intentions/motivations is helpful. He loves the Valve company. He wants to play this game that he's been waiting for 4 years to ship. But the game keeps on getting delayed. He wants know the progress of the game's development. So then he decides looking at the source code is a good way to achieve this. I think it's very reasonable to argue that, "Had he known that by doing what he did would only further delay the game he wants to play and cause his heroes a lot of trouble, he would not have done it." The ramifications in this case is not as nearly as straight forward compared to breaking into a factory for the sake of gaining possession of the factory's secret plans. I really hope you can see this difference.
>so i don't see how what he did was any different from someone breaking into a factory and stealing secret plans
I think I've already done the best I can to explain to you the differences. If you still cannot see it then you are just going to have to figure this one out on your own/with someone else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dichotomy That might be a good place to start. I notice coders often tend to engage in this kind of over generalization/all or nothing thinking.
Quite simply, he should have known better. I know what a false dichotomy is - and it's exactly what you are purveying by insisting (so far without justification) that crimes with physical effects are not comparable to those without.