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Originally Posted by leebase
Rather he was pointing out that the "gray issues" are a terribly small minority of the ACTUAL cases. Folks like to talk them up and obscure the basic reality. Taking commercial products without paying for them is stealing.
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Harry Potter ebooks are not commercial products.
And "making a copy" is not "taking." When someone is arrested for "stealing bread," that doesn't mean "he made a loaf of bread that was so much like SuperBreadCo's loaves that he didn't want to pay for theirs anymore."
Stealing means taking something away from someone else. If you make something so ubiquitous that nobody's willing to pay for it, you may be guilty of interfering with a business; you haven't stolen anything.
If someone stands next to a pretzel cart and gives away free pretzels, he's not "stealing," even if he's using the same recipe to make pretzels.
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Pirating a book is stealing:
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Could you define "pirating" in a legal sense? Some unauthorized copies are fair use, after all. Copyright law even
states an exception for entire copies for educational purposes.
Is it pirating to download the contents of a blog? Doing so removes the author's chance to make money from hit counters and ad clicks; is that theft? Is it stealing to browse the web with Adblock Plus?
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The very very very small minority of situations where it MIGHT not be stealing do not change the VAST majority of scenarios where it is stealing.
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It is never stealing; it's copyright infringement, or sometimes distribution of illegal copies.
It's not "assault," either, no matter how hurt the author or publisher feels. Nor is it "murder," even if an author commits suicide from low sales.
Which doesn't mean it's acceptable or legal--just that "theft" is not the relevant legal issue. Attempting to assign a simple, emotionally-charged crime to a complex aspect of business law just shows that the anti-copying crowd can't get enough support for their stance if they use accurate terminology.