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larrik

IS IT the same principle? Usually pirated software distributors don't claim original authorship.

I'm not saying that the "merely copied" argument is correct, I'm just saying that I think the situations are different.

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The main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy.

Just like with the OP's site.

"The main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that there is still an original copy."

No, the main argument for 'piracy is not stealing' is that piracy is not stealing. Stealing is the substraction of property, which piracy isn't.

This isn't stealing either, this is plagiarism.

If we don't name things with their correct names, we create false associations, and that makes arguing about those things needlesly complicated. It's hard enough getting a consensus on anything related to IP as it is, so we should avoid ambiguous syntax wherever possible.

Violent agreement. You and GP seem to be saying exactly the same thing -- because the original still exists, there is no subtraction of property, and it is not stealing.

They are saying the same thing as far as that goes, but rick888 then uses that as a jumping-off point to misrepresent a (fairly OT) position he doesn't agree with. He's conflating the arguments of "piracy is not stealing" and "piracy is not necessarily bad," which are only thinly connected (being theft would make piracy almost certainly wrong, but not being theft doesn't confer any moral value either way).

I do think that's true, which is why I'd call this something like "plagiarism" rather than "stealing". The issue isn't that anyone's had an item removed from their possession (as with theft), but someone is trying to pass off someone else's work as their own. Like if I were to publish a novel, but lift large parts of the novel from an existing novel. I guess you could colloquially say that I've "stolen text" from that novel, much as people say that Microsoft "stole" the recycling bin from Apple's trash can, but plagiarism seems to get at the underlying issue more directly.

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