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Eh, I hate arguing this point cause I find myself doing it a lot and never really getting anywhere interesting, but here goes. I believe copyright infringement is a subset of stealing. The common definition of stealing is taking something you don't own without permission. The fact that the owner still has a copy is immaterial. Acting like depriving the owner of their copy is a necessary component of stealing is just a remnant of a time where it was much harder to make perfect copy of valuable property. I know the copy vs. steal debate is touchy, but I also feel it is just a distraction from the larger issue.


In most copyright infringements, the infringers are either sharing what they legally bought and own or accepting something that was shared with them and sharing it themselves. There is never any "taking" involved, for any definition of the word.




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