Me having kicked you doesn't hurt anyone - the act of kicking you does hurt. So after I have kicked you, and you no longer feel pain, no harm done? I'm stealing your lunch and the next day you have a new lunch and are no longer hungry, no harm done?
I think the act can't be seperated from the result - this is were people go wrong.
Yes, it can be separated. Let's say some kid takes a you-know-what-kind of photo of himself. Then, he stores it in a pendrive. He forgets about it, loses the pendrive while on vacation in the other corner of the world. There, another person finds it and distributes it. The kid never finds out.
There, completely separated. Possession of that specific photo would not do any harm to the kid in any way. It's contrived, very, very improbable and not how all of it happens in reality, but there it is.
Also, by the way, just by participating in this conversation, we are going to be labeled of being pro you-know-what in about five years from now, giving the current trend.
You missed the ease of digital replication: one needs not participate in a sexual act involving children to replicate child pornography. It's not like it's a healthy thing to consume such material, but the distinction must be made to avoid the concept being abused by digital publishers who think one sharing an ebook with a friend would cause lost in their revenue.
If I take your apple, scan it in my StarTrek replicator, then put it back, I've not stolen anything. At worst, I've borrowed it without your consent. The fact that I can use my replicator to make as many apples as I want, which are just like the one I borrowed from you, is not stealing.
Not saying it wouldn't be wrong. But it's decidedly different from stealing.
Likewise, getting a copy of a copyrighted movie with Bittorent through the Pirate Bay is not really stealing. It may still be wrong, but since it does not deprive the original owner from their own copy of the movie, it's different from stealing.
In general, non-rival goods should be treated with different rules and laws than rival goods. Turning them back into rival goods like copyright does strikes me as a very bad idea. Artificial scarcity is… non optimal to say the least.
>If I steal an apple from you and grow more apples from it and give them away, there is no difference to the act of stealing your apple and eating it.
Certainly, but we talk about digital good here, stealing the first apple harms me (unless if I was not going to use it regardless), copying it however does not.
>RMS seams to be totally against "stealing" digital GPLed code.
Please explain what you mean by stealing here. He is against taking GPLed code, modifying it, compiling it, and then distributing the binary without distributing your modifications. He has no problem with selling the application/code. He has no problem with keeping the modifications to yourself as long as you do not share the binary. He has no problem with distributing the unmodified binary and/or code.
I think the act can't be seperated from the result - this is were people go wrong.