"It's smash and grab, no different than a guy walking down Fifth Avenue and smashing the window at Tiffany's and reaching in and grabbing what's in the window."

"It's smash and grab, no different than a guy walking down Fifth Avenue and smashing the window at Tiffany's and reaching in and grabbing what's in the window." Except that it's not...stealing jewels from a store deprives the original owner of physical property. Downloading torrent of the latest Jay-Z album (that I would never have bought anyway) doesn't take any "ice" off of Jay-Z's wrists. The former is theft, the latter is copyright infringement. As the article mentions, piracy may actually help the economy. If I download that Jay-Z album and tell 3 friends how great it is, they may actually buy it, or even better, buy some concert tickets to see Jay-Z in concert (where he makes more money from merchandise sales).