Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesbeat
Bad analogy. Stealing a physical book from Borders would be depriving them of a physical object, and thus prevent them from selling it to someone else.
Downloading a pirated ebook, while it is still wrong, does not permanently deprive the publisher of it, and thus does not meet the definition of stealing.
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It's the same thing to me.
As we move to digital products in certain industries, the definition of theft has to change.
In 50 years you probably won't be able to buy a physical album, copy of a movie and maybe not even books as it all goes digital as broad band spreads and industries move that way as a route to kill off second hand sales of movies, video games, books etc.
So stealing will no longer be depriving someone of a physical copy, it will be getting the digital copy (which is the only version) without paying for it.