Since everyone loves analogies... lets try this one:
I tell you that I have figured out how to make the tastiest sandwich ever... it's taken me years of research and thousands of dollars.
I will tell you how to make this sandwich for $5 bucks!
You pay me, I tell you and you make the sandwich, which is really really good.
The next day, you tell a buddy at work how to make that sandwich.
I hear about it and goes to the police accusing you of being a thief.
See how that doesn't quite make sense?
Have you stolen my money from me? Have you stolen an actual Sandwich? No and no. What you have "stolen" from me is the potential $5 bucks I could have made if I had sold my secret sandwich recipe to your buddy.
That's
theoretical money for an
intangible product.
...and there's no motive anywhere either, because you didn't gain anything at all from telling your buddy, quite the opposite since you waisted your break explaining the whole thing to him.
So, what DID happen here then?
Well, you caused my business to
suffer financially by your actions... and as long as I can reasonably prove that, I should get compensated and you should possibly be punished to some extent by society. This is where the Internet comes in... If you tell your buddy on your lunch break, I can't really prove that it damages my business (your buddy might never have bought that sandwich recipe in the first place) but if you publish my recipe on a site named "FreeSuperSandwichRecipe.com" with 50,000 uniques per day, it's pretty fucking obvious that you ARE doing some measurable damage to my ability to charge people $5 bucks.
Damage, not stealing. Difference.
