A key property of theft and stealing is "permanently depriving" another of something. If someone downloads a binary representation of some information, the dow

A key property of theft and stealing is "permanently depriving" another of something. If someone downloads a binary representation of some information, the downloaded bits have been exactly duplicated many times (barring errors). When one consumes or views that copy of the information no other individual is deprived of anything as a direct result. I'm actually a fan of the notion of copyright, trademarks and intellectual property in a sense but not to power it currently holds. Infringement on your sole or licensed right to copy is not as significant an issue as permanently depriving someone of something. You might argue that someone who copies another's information is depriving them of money that would have been paid for that information. This is flawed though as you would need to be able to prove that the infringer of the copyright would have paid for the information in the first place.