Quote:
Originally Posted by CyGuy
Theft is depriving someone of property that is rightfully theirs. If the "victim" has exactly what they started with then no theft occurred. This has been pointed out over and over again yet it still seems to be elusive to some.
|
I understand the point exactly, you cannot, so to speak, steal what's not in a persons pocket.
The way I see it is that that argument is simply a justification for stealing. The exact (I believe) equivalent in the physical world would be if I were some sort of a weird multi-millionaire and printed up thousands of books of a just released best seller then stood outside all the bookshops and gave them away to anyone that would accept one. Would that meet the legal definition of physical theft by those that accepted the book when they knew it wasn't one published by the author? Probably not (But who knows for sure. :-)) but the fact is, by willfully preventing the author from making as large a profit as would have been made without my giveaway they would be stealing those profits just as surely as if they had taken that money out of his wallet.