Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
The way I see it, theft is taking what doesn't belong to you without paying for it. Any other definition is just a thief's self-justification or a legal squabble to earn a buck.
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I pointed this out to HarryT as well: your definition is ignoring freebies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
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.
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First of all, I like how in the story you don't consider yourself responsible for the author's potential loss of profits, but the people accepting free books.
The second point would be: I remember reading posts by authors who self published through Amazon that said that when other stores had offers that lowered the price of their books Amazon would match those prices and if the price went below a certain value (was it 2.99?) they would go from getting 70% on each book to getting 30%. Since you consider loss of profits to be caused by someone stealing, who is the thief in these cases?
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
You're saying there's a difference between stealing with intend to defraud and stealing just for the hell of it?
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I think that the point was that what you described isn't called stealing.