Quote:
Originally Posted by evil nickname
I'm just making the case that the act of downloading music is nothing at all like stealing. When you steal something, the original owner has one less item of merchandise. When you download something, you've made a copy, and the original owner still has the same amount of merchandise. The two are fundamentally different, and I believe you can't have a decent discussion when you're muddying the water with appeals to emotion like "downloading is stealing, and thou shalt not steal, 'cause stealing's bad, m'kay?"
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I see the distinction being made between the two, and while the original item has not been taken from it's owner/author, their earnings for providing a copy of that has been diminished because some people decide they are entitled to have for free what others must pay for. You could therefore say by the same token that tax evasion is not stealing.