Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
What harm is there for taking an apple, more will grow. Yet you admit it is stealing, just a matter of degree, right?
What if you just took the seeds, or maybe just the pollen. Maybe the neighbor's pollen drifts into your yard and pollinates your tree? Have you done anything wrong?
What if you intentionally take the pollen from the neighbor's tree because he has very good apples and pollinate your tree with his pollen. Have you done anything wrong?
Just a matter of degree, right?
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Stealing is taking something from someone so that they don't have it any more. Copying it for personal use is a different thing. Copying it and selling it is another different thing. How morally bad any particular example of any of these different things is, depends on how it strikes us.
Stealing seeds or pollen seems pretty trivial, but I guess it's stealing if you go and take it (and with the decline in bees, perhaps people will be protecting their pollen at some future point!) If pollen blows into your garden that's not stealing, because you haven't taken anything. If you tresspass to steal pollen, it's probably the trespass that will annoy people.
But these are all degrees of stealing - there's no "degree" of copying that becomes stealing or vice versa. So the argument that copying is not stealing is not a matter of degree, but a matter of kind.