Is Stealing something digital the same as stealing something physical?

Sorry, I had to cut it short and step out. I'm back and have another scenario for people to think about.

What if you had a replicator? (Star Trek reference of their machines called replicators which are able to make anything
out of thin air).

So let's say you designed a cool star trek cup of tea. In the real world, it would take someone to actually collect the tea leaves, picking them all day in the hot sun, then washing them, drying them, take days of your effort, then package it for sale, boil the water and steep it, now serve and you pay $2.50 for the cup of tea.

Well with a replicator, you could just say, "computer, cup of tea, hot" and it's done. Is that worth $2.50? If someone didn't
pay $2.50 are you really taking a loss? Are you really losing money by saying, "that's money I should have had but didn't get"?

With that replicator, you could literally produce a thousand of that cup of tea or just 1. So I find it unsettling that some company or business could complain and argue that they lost something. They didn't lose anything. They just didn't get more of what they wanted (greed). If you make a cup of tea from scratch, there should be a value to it that compensates the effort put in to make it. If you reproduce it digitally unlimited amount of times at your disposal, you shouldn't be allowed to claim that you OWN INFINITY and that "infinity" is your property and legal right. If it is your right to own infinite, then when is enough going to be enough? $10k in sales? $1m in sales? $1 billion in sales just for that cup of tea? They can always argue that they only got $12.5 billion from their cup of tea but they should have got $25 billion but thanks to thieves they lost out on their infinite quantity they are owed. You got paid 12 billion dollars for 1 cup of tea! Geez, they still wanna complain about stealing? How much does it take for that one cup of tea to be considered fair value before you stop criticizing people for stealing your tea and not paying you $2.50? You didn't make it 12 billion times, you made it one time and replicated it for free 12 billion times.

So morally, I suppose stealing is stealing if it even is really stealing in the first place, but logically, we're not talking about actually using up anything and exhausting resources to someone else's detriment. Nothing is changed except how much more money you could have had (greed). There's no limit to greed. 1 billion dollars is not enough. That's why billionaires like Jeff Bezos worth $150 billion doesn't want to stop. $150 billion dollars is not enough for him. He wants more. You (human nature) will always want more.

So in essence, the only thing I'm stealing is their greed (if you really think about it, that's what it boils down to).

Thriveink said:

In my opinion, If you are stealing someone's data and sharing with other people to make money then it's stealing. But if you are watching online videos for free instead of taking membership then it's not robbery.

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The problem here is that by sharing the data to other people, the person who owned this data cannot sell it anymore to the people who would have bought it. so it is indirectly affecting their sales.

There was an antipiracy campaign in the 2000s with the slogan: "You wouldn't download a car.", which sums the thread starter dilemma up well in my opinion. Although in the age of the 3D printers, it's getting a bit outdated. lol

Whats it to you?

oatmeal said:

Well with a replicator, you could just say, "computer, cup of tea, hot" and it's done. Is that worth $2.50? If someone didn't
pay $2.50 are you really taking a loss? Are you really losing money by saying, "that's money I should have had but didn't get"?

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Yes, this is still stealing. I'll explain (briefly, because I'm about to go to sleep)...
I'm an Amazon seller. As an Amazon seller, we have things similar to "replicators" that we refer to as "hijackers". They essentially bypass all the work done to do what we do to become successful in our given niches, and they bandwagon, often not only replicating our exact products, but also jumping on our own listings to sell them. They've literally done none of the work required to become successful and yet, they become successful, nonetheless (at least, until we send IP claims and threaten them with legal action), or until they get their accounts shut down and are unable to continue selling on the platform.

Or another example that's more aligned with replicating... Let's say 3D printing becomes really advanced in 10 years, and we can print all sorts of products with all sorts of materials. Because trademarks and copyrights exist, I wouldn't legally be able to print Nike shoes and either sell them or give them away or whatever else I want to do with them, without realistically expecting at least a lawsuit if they were to ever find out I was doing it. By creating or replicating their product, I'm stealing their money. Even if I don't do anything with the shoes but wear them, that's one pair of shoes I essentially stole from them.

Toz said:

Stealing is stealing. Stealing + Sharing, is even worse, because now this theft gets multiplied. It's easier to not feel as bad (or perhaps bad at all) when doing it online, because there are so many reasons you can give yourself, as to why it's "okay". I buy things when I can. That being said, there was a time when I wore the proverbial eye patch, so I get it.

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So if someone shares a marketing course it is blatant stealing but what about the people who download it...would the people who download the course consider as stealers just because someone else shared it?

TheVigilante said:

So if someone shares a marketing course it is blatant stealing but what about the people who download it...would the people who download the course consider as stealers just because someone else shared it?

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Yes, that's also stealing. It doesn't matter if you steal it or someone steals it and gives it to you. It's still stolen.
I think this is what makes digital theft potentially more problematic [but different] than physical theft.
For example, if someone steals your book, that book can only be stolen one time AND you no longer have that book.
Likewise, if someone steals your eBook, that eBook can be stolen n times and depending on whether or not you had a backup (assuming you weren't hacked), you may or may not have that eBook.
If the book costs $10, and it's stolen, you lose $10.
If the eBook costs $10, and it's stolen, you could lose $10 or you could lose $300,000+.

Toz said:

Yes, that's also stealing. It doesn't matter if you steal it or someone steals it and gives it to you. It's still stolen.

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What if I end up downloading it and end up purchasing the product to support the guy what then?

I would usually say not really, but it depends on what you're doing. I would never condone anything illegal, like ripping plugins etc from websites or downloading movies, but I think the companies that make these things, do so knowing that they're going to make significant profit, which they do. However as an individual, we're not exactly protected like rich people.

I would say it is wrong in general, if you can afford it, just buy it

TheVigilante said:

What if I end up downloading it and end up purchasing the product to support the guy what then?

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Then as long as you haven't shared it, no harm done. Once you share it, you begin a trail of exponentially stealing from the person.

I completely understand Toz's point of view. Strictly speaking in terms of morals, yes, that's all stealing.
If we're going to use the God standard (being able to know all, see all, etc)., stealing is stealing whichever way you look at it.

But again, I don't think it's really stealing unless some actual physical resource is lost because of it AND if one actually definitively can put a face value on it (which can't be done).

So essentially what we are now talking about is whoever can be the first person to trademark or patent something that
wasn't considered stealing but now that they own it, it is now considered stealing.

Can you really claim that you "lost" money that you should have it if not for someone downloading it for free? No. Because you don't know that if that person had to pay for it, would have continued to pay and download it. They probably just wouldn't buy it in the first place. So I don't think companies or people have any real hold on that argument to claim that all the free downloads is money they lost and could have been theirs. Not true. If everyone who downloaded something for free were told they would have had to pay $200 for it, 98% of freeloaders or more would then not even buy it.

Imagine someone trademarking or patenting air. Now for every breath you take, and don't pay that company X dollars, they are losing money? They aren't losing anything. They are only losing what their greed thought or wanted them to have. If we continue breathing the trademarked air and pay money or don't pay money, nothing intrinsically is different in both scenarios. No air is gained or lost just because you pay for it or don't pay for it. That's all legality and just made up stuff via these trademarks and patents. Again, I don't know how people can lay claim on infinity. If you made the product, there should be an intrinsic fair value of compensation in return for it. But to claim that you should have or be owed a billion times more instead of just a thousand times more is difficult to justify.

Here's another example.

Gaming companies realized that instead of asking customers to pay money for their games, can actually do better by offering the games for FREE. Then later on with built in systems in the gameplay, you can entice those players to start purchasing in-game items, credits, privileges, etc.

So if you downloaded the game for free and started playing it, is that considered stealing? Why not? You didn't pay for something that people worked hard to make. Why is that not stealing? Oh...because the company offered it to the public for free. Ah ha. You see? There is no difference intrinsically. Nothing physically different. Just a legal term that since the company offered it for free, and you downloaded it without paying, it's not stealing anymore even though you are using something that someone else worked hard to make and you didn't pay for it.

It's all just about legal terms now. So in legal terms, stealing is stealing if they forbade it. But real world intrinsic value, there is no difference. It's a digital copy. Infinite. "Resourceless", like claiming "air". You can charge for it or not charge for it and won't make a difference. It only becomes stealing once someone puts a legal disclaimer on it saying, "blah blah blah this is my property and nobody shall use it for free or without pay or consent etc"

I think it's called intellectual property rights or digital property rights....that's where it gets iffy to me. It's a very muddy area once you start claiming ownership of things that is beyond the original physical creation of the product. Now you are claiming the "infinitesimal" money/wealth that can't be measured or definitively quantified.

oatmeal said:

Gaming companies realized that instead of asking customers to pay money for their games, can actually do better by offering the games for FREE. Then later on with built in systems in the gameplay, you can entice those players to start purchasing in-game items, credits, privileges, etc.

So if you downloaded the game for free and started playing it, is that considered stealing?

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I see your points but this example falls short. It's not stealing because the game owners / developers / whomever, decided to have this as their business model. They earn their money off the back end. Now if you were to download this free game and then load up CheatEngine and OllyDbg and Winsock Packet Editor, and then start manipulating your data packets to either provide yourself with unlimited free money to purchase all their upgrades with money that you created from thin air, or injected a code cave to NOP out the request for money in exchange for some item the game company is selling, or send fake UDP packets to claim that you've spent the money for said items when you really haven't, then you'd be stealing. But using the game company's "freemium" business model while playing legitimately, is not stealing.

But yes, I, too, dislike much of the legal loopholes and terminology and patents and copyrights and brand registry, etc. But those are the safeguards in place to help protect such assets.

Toz said:

I see your points but this example falls short. It's not stealing because the game owners / developers / whomever, decided to have this as their business model. They earn their money off the back end. Now if you were to download this free game and then load up CheatEngine and OllyDbg and Winsock Packet Editor, and then start manipulating your data packets to either provide yourself with unlimited free money to purchase all their upgrades with money that you created from thin air, or injected a code cave to NOP out the request for money in exchange for some item the game company is selling, or send fake UDP packets to claim that you've spent the money for said items when you really haven't, then you'd be stealing. But using the game company's "freemium" business model while playing legitimately, is not stealing.

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agreed! according to the legalities they set forth since they offered it for free, we take it without paying for it, it's not stealing. If they change the wording and say, you should pay us $70 to have the game, and u took it without paying, now it's considered stealing. In both scenarios, nothing physically changed. The game is the same game. Nothing is was actually lost or gained. But as you said, whatever their business model was, depending on what rules they set, it becomes theft or free. This is actually a very interesting topic.

Not taking the pirates' side, but here's a compelling argument they present: Stealing means taking something from the owner so that they no longer have it -- say, an apple from a shop owner. Pirating, on the other hand, is simply making a copy, but leaving the original object intact.



Still, digital piracy is effectively stealing the revenue.

How about this example?

There is a room full of boxes. Those boxes are all really empty BUT I will tell people that there are valuable diamonds in them. Remember this point.

Scenario A: I tell people you can go into my room and take as many boxes as you want, it's free. People go in and take boxes they think have diamonds in them and leave. Not stealing. Why? Because I simply made it my legal rule that it was ok for them to take it.

Scenario B: I tell people you CANNOT go into my room and take my boxes of diamonds because they are valuable to me. If you want them, you need to pay $2000 per box to me. So some people go in there and take my boxes without paying me. Oh no! I've lost money! No, remember there was nothing actually in those boxes.

So in both cases A and B, nothing physically is different. They are both the same because the boxes are empty and so if you take it without paying or you take it for free with my consent, there is no difference in terms of the physical world. Nothing lost or gained.

But scenario B would be considered stealing and scenario A not stealing. Why? Simply because I made a rule (trademark, patent, copyright, whatever u wanna call it). But there were no diamonds lost. Nothing was really lost...you make it as much or as little of it as you want. It was just a matter of who obeyed the rules and who disobeyed it that made it stealing or not stealing.


If someone is making money off your stuff, there is a definitive value you and say "hey, that money should be in my pocket cuz that's my property and he stole or copied it off me without my consent!" Yes, this is fine. I can see the clear transgression.

If someone is just using it for their own personal pleasure, ie, watching a movie or streaming a sports event, not turning it for a profit or making their own illegal business, that's where I don't think people can just say, 'I lost money' or 'that's money I should have in my pocket'. If it was shared online and you accessed it for free, they only accessed it because it was for free. If it was paid, there's no guarantee that all those people would be paying you for it. 99% of them probably wouldn't if they had to pay. So the companies claiming they are owed money from those 99% are hypothetical really. It's not money they lost...it's just potential money they "could" have gained but you can't say for sure.

But honestly, I would prefer your viewpoint because that is more of the higher road to go...the God standard so to speak.....but then how ironic that we raise ourselves to such pious and holy standards when it comes to this topic, but in all else, we reject the truthful and moral teachings from where this all comes from. I can't get into it more as you know it's not allowed so I shall stop here.

My point has always been that in life, all questions and roads eventually lead to the topic we are not allowed to discuss. Interesting isn't it.

Toz said:

That's why, for example, we have this.

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The do not share list is our way to respect other member's properties, but it won't stop us to search for it on other forums. IMO, we are trying to make our IM business as successful as possible, and if it against the law, we have to deal with it. Even in this forum, people get banned. So, let the lawmaker defines the meaning of "digital stealing", while we, as Internet Entrepreneur, will find loopholes to win. And that's the only mind setting we must have, to 'win' not to 'be right'.

Dribber said:

This is a blackhat forum and we are members here, it's too late to question our moral code.

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From my understanding, blackhat refers to the techniques used for marketing rather than being explicitly a crime. The punitive actions towards blackhat techniques usually result in bans from the platforms being used instead of legal action. I do agree with the moral code argument though, but the question was what we classify as stealing not if we approve of it or not.

oatmeal said:

I'm not sure but most people here probably don't remember when the US movies used to make 90% of their box office revenue from North America only (Canada and US).

I remember those times and it wasn't that long ago.

Suddenly, America is able to export their movies to half the globe and put them in thousands of theaters worldwide and now they are making 70% or more of their total gross from international gross than domestic.

They didn't do any extra work. It's the same movie. The only difference now is that they were able to get the world's market share instead of just North America and now they make so much more money than they used to. I remember when Waterworld came out as the most expensive film made at $200 million and it only gross like $100 million but that was because it was only shown in America. If it had been shown to 80 other countries in the world, the world's biggest movie grossing loser would have actually still made a good size profit simply because the market share is so much bigger but the movie itself hasn't changed at all.

So there is no rule as to how much or how little something should be valued at. Markets determine it but even markets is a very loose term because that has a lot of factors too that is not concrete.

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oatmeal said:

Well with a replicator, you could just say, "computer, cup of tea, hot" and it's done. Is that worth $2.50? If someone didn't
pay $2.50 are you really taking a loss? Are you really losing money by saying, "that's money I should have had but didn't get"?

With that replicator, you could literally produce a thousand of that cup of tea or just 1. So I find it unsettling that some company or business could complain and argue that they lost something. They didn't lose anything. They just didn't get more of what they wanted (greed). If you make a cup of tea from scratch, there should be a value to it that compensates the effort put in to make it. If you reproduce it digitally unlimited amount of times at your disposal, you shouldn't be allowed to claim that you OWN INFINITY and that "infinity" is your property and legal right. If it is your right to own infinite, then when is enough going to be enough? $10k in sales? $1m in sales? $1 billion in sales just for that cup of tea? They can always argue that they only got $12.5 billion from their cup of tea but they should have got $25 billion but thanks to thieves they lost out on their infinite quantity they are owed. You got paid 12 billion dollars for 1 cup of tea! Geez, they still wanna complain about stealing? How much does it take for that one cup of tea to be considered fair value before you stop criticizing people for stealing your tea and not paying you $2.50? You didn't make it 12 billion times, you made it one time and replicated it for free 12 billion times.

So morally, I suppose stealing is stealing if it even is really stealing in the first place, but logically, we're not talking about actually using up anything and exhausting resources to someone else's detriment. Nothing is changed except how much more money you could have had (greed). There's no limit to greed. 1 billion dollars is not enough. That's why billionaires like Jeff Bezos worth $150 billion doesn't want to stop. $150 billion dollars is not enough for him. He wants more. You (human nature) will always want more.

So in essence, the only thing I'm stealing is their greed (if you really think about it, that's what it boils down to).

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The fact that they have the potential to sell the same product millions of times over means their budget for the production will also increase to maximise appeal. Digital products are cheaper to produce, so companies producing them take advantage of the savings by increasing advertisement and marketing costs. It may seem like greed to you, but they would have more people to pay and overheads to cover.

Sure they'll be earning more money, but if there was no other product available and you had free way of obtaining it legitly, then it's stealing technically as that's a purchase they could have convinced you to make but you didn't because you're aware of the pirating out there. If nobody watches the pirated content the people producing them wouldn't waste their time.

TheVigilante said:

For example some of us download a lot of IM courses for free on this forum or elsewhere would you classify this as stealing or sharing?

Streaming sporting events on free streaming sites instead of paying for pay per view to watch a boxing match or something again shady line...it's technically stealing but is it really?

@oatmeal what do you think?

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It's not entirely similar, but it's still stealing.

You are denying the content creator his deserved reward, because you're using his work for your own benefit without paying.

But on the other hand, you're not denying others the right to buy it. It's different from stealing a painting, where everyone would be denied the right to view it on a museum because you stole it. When you pirate content, you're not denying everyone else access to it.

So many hypocrites trying to justify it with "oh but it's ok if it's not on a big scale"