It's really no more or less absurd than someone going to jail for stealing a car. Though I have to admit I think sending people to jail for that is a really bad idea.
If one person had exclusive use of "Word", the "IP" would be worth a great deal less than it is right now, when almost everyone has "Word". The property here is called "network effects", and it also applies to physical property. If only two telephones exist, they're a good deal less valuable than if everyone has a telephone.
The difference between stealing a car and putting it in a garage and stealing code and letting it sit on a flash drive in an office drawer is that the original owner of the car no longer has exclusive rights to use it, but the rightful owner of the code can continue to use their original property, often times exclusively. It's only when, as you eluded to, the stolen code gets used that a financial loss can be justified and I wouldn't argue against prison as a punishment.
But, I'm not really arguing that stealing code or any other intellectual property is _not_ wrong, but there really is a difference between the common analogy of stealing a car, which I think most people who do argue that position are trying to justify. I don't think that a person or company can truly claim a financial loss if they become aware of someone else or another company is in possession of their code until they have proof that the code was used either as reference or directly.
Why are developers so eager to deny that code has any value?
with code, you are only depriving the owner of exclusivity, and then only if you use that code in the real world. and even then, it only becomes material harm if you actually use it to compete with them.
it's vastly different.
I feel the same should be done for counterfeit goods.
What an interesting opinion.
The value of a thing comes, in part, from the labor to get it. His employer paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this code. On the other hand, stealing it, unlike a car, results in a duplication with the original still in working condition.
Was anything lost, physically no, but he did commit a serious breach of contract rather than theft.
Property rights don't just grant you the right not to be made worse off, they grant you the exclusive right to profit from something.
Now, whether non-violent violations of property rights should be punished by jail time is a separate issue.
If you can do that I'm prepared to give code all the same rights as traditional property. If you can't then you might consider that physical goods and intellectual ones aren't the same and MAYBE different rules should apply.
What real actual things is the code representative of?
Further I was talking about code in general. To have separate laws or treatment of "financial" code versus "regular" code would be pretty silly. How would you even draw the line between the two?
Rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)
I'd also argue that stealing code is depriving the owner the control of the code. The property interest is in the code in the non-tangible sense. It doesn't matter that I still have a copy.
This is especially true for code that is confidential. A lot of the value of Goldman's code is that nobody else knows it. Otherwise you can predict their trades, which can cost them money.
I just don't get the idea that millions of dollars of hard work can be stolen and it isn't a big deal because it's not physical. But everyone is okay when you throw a kid in jail for stealing a pair of Beats that cost 20 bucks to assemble.
Because it changes the nature of the harm caused.
Stealing a car is a crime not because the defendant has a car, it's a crime because the true owner no longer has his car.
Stealing code... the true owner still has it. And while there may still be harm, it's certainly of a lesser sort.
And in this case in particular, no harm occurred or could reasonably have occurred in any variation of the scenario.
This is a craftsman keeping a photograph of his work for a portfolio. Nothing more.
> A lot of the value of Goldman's code is that nobody else knows it.
If that's the value... then that code has no value.
> Otherwise you can predict their trades,
Then their trades amount to gambling, and I don't see why the taxpayer should have to pay for security for their vice.
It's a crime because he has someone else's car. A property interest in the US common law system has always carried a right of exclusion and a right of control.
You are trying to limit it to just a right of possession.
>And while there may still be harm, it's certainly of a lesser sort.
Only because you insist that physical loss is always worse. Don't you think Goldman would be worse off if this code was taken vs. one of their cars? One is worth millions and the other several thousand dollars.
In fact, we have a very easy way of deciding which is worse. The economic damage is causes. That is actually how society judges how bad stealing is. Theft over a certain amount is worse than petty theft.
>This is a craftsman keeping a photograph of his work for a portfolio. Nothing more.
That is another matter entirely. I do agree the state should have to prove he intended to use it or disclose it to the public/goldman competitors.
It's sort analogous to borrowing vs stealing. Not every instance of taking without permission is stealing.
By that definition code is not property.
That doesn't make any sense.
It's a crime because the someone else doesn't have their car.
If he could somehow have the car and the owner still have it, then there'd be no harm. Arguably even no crime.
What you describe doesn't criminalize theft... it criminalizes possession.