"Stealing" or "Theft"

Copyright apologists like to say that copying a work that is copyrighted and was published to the public, is equivalent to "stealing" or "theft". However, stealing involves taking tangible property without permission, and depriving the owner of one less instance of it. On the other hand, with a public work, we can make an unlimited number of copies, while not harming the original, and while respecting the exclusive rights of the author for his work. This is because we just copy it - we don't claim it is ours.

Accusing people who share or duplicate media non-commercially of "stealing" obscures two other forms of media-related crimes that are in fact stealing:

  1. If someone has somehow gained access to my private files and used it to prepare his own copies (or worse delete the originals), then he has performed stealing. Not of "Intellectual Property" but of actual property, because the files are private and I do not wish them to be inspected by someone else. And privacy must be respected.

  2. If someone has made an inclusive work of someone's else's work, and claimed it was his, then it may be called "stealing" of copyrights.

But copying a work that was released for public consumption, can never be considered "stealing". Instead it is merely "copying", "swapping", "sharing", etc.