> When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft.
So your position is that if a company sells something, anything that deprives them of potential income is theft? If I set up a separate bike store down the street and charge less than you, have I stolen from you? How about if I give them away for free?
If you set up a separate bike store, steal my bikes--which I spent my own money to create--from my store, and and give it away for free, then yes, you are a thief.
If you set up a separate bike store AND make a bike with your own time and energy and money, and give it away for free, good luck on your business.
p.s.
I am a heavy user of Bittorrent myself and appreciate the technology (I'm sure most people on HN have done illegal downloads), but I at least acknowledge what I am doing is technically stealing. The only reason I'm not going to jail is because it's technically and economically not easy to enforce it. Just because I'm not going to jail doesn't mean it's not stealing. Stealing is stealing.
All I'm saying is people who do illegal downloads should at least understand what they are doing is technically a theft and don't feel so entitled for stealing from other people. I sincerely hope there are better ways to incentivize creators who spend their time and energy producing their intellectual property to the world.
You're arguing circularly; it's stealing because it's theft because it's stealing. If I make my own bike store and produce bikes which are identical to yours without taking yours away, then it's not theft.
> If I make my own bike store and produce bikes which are identical to yours without taking yours away, then it's not theft.
That's exactly in line with what I said. It's not theft in that case. You are getting lost in your own analogy.
A bike is valuable because of the time, energy, and money put into producing it. If you set up your own bike store and produce the bike that's identical to my bike, you deserve to make money from it.
But that's not what's happening here. Here's what's happening: Let's say you start making your living by producing and selling bikes at your own bike store. One night I break into your bike store and just take a bike away. I didn't put in any time, energy, and money into producing the bike. You did. You spent your time, energy, and money to build that bike, which you could have spent on other things in life. If I didn't steal it, you could have made money from that bike. I deprived you of an opportunity to make money from your investment.
Let's use a more large scale example to see how this can be a very dangerous line of thought. A guy named anthony levandowski took intellectual property from Google and tried to produce autonomous vehicles which are identical to what Google was trying to build, WITHOUT taking google's technology away. Google can feel free to build their autonomous vehicle, what's the big deal? This is not stealing, right? Well, here's what happened: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandows...
Intellectual property is very real. Just because certain types of intellectual property cannot be protected because of the nature of the digital technology, does NOT mean it is not stealing. Stealing is stealing. Some thefts are considered "ok" because "everyone else is doing it and there's no easy way to enforce it", but it's steal stealing.
So your position is that if a company sells something, anything that deprives them of potential income is theft? If I set up a separate bike store down the street and charge less than you, have I stolen from you? How about if I give them away for free?