Originally Posted by Cherry7

Because the essence of what you are buying and selling is a digital number, obtaining that number without permission is stealing. The thief did not have the number and now does.

As a spy breaks in and steals secrets. (he may just copy them)

Saying it is not because the original remains is pedantic, as after all, when a copy is sold the original remains too. The number of copies grows with the number of sales so it cannot be compared to 10 apples which are either stolen, sold or remain but are always 10


If there was a replicator to copy paintings, a thief copies a painting value 1 million dollars and makes an identical copy, he still leaves the owner the original, but now as there are two, the value is halved. The thief has stolen value of half a million dollars.