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When Stealing Isn't Stealing
- paulhauggis 15y agoIdentity theft is still called "theft", when in reality, nothing is really stolen, you information is merely copied. If I copied your credit card number and sold in a big list to someone online (note: I didn't use the number to actually charge anything, I am just selling the numbers), it would still be called "theft" in all of the newspapers and under the law. Let's not forget the whole Thesis theme debacle a little over a year ago. Tons of people here on HN were screaming that they stole source code. Wouldn't the source code have to be physically taken for it to be considered stolen (according to this article)? Whenever I see an article talking about how pirating shouldn't be called theft, it's usually because the original author believes it should be legal. It's actually closer to counterfeiting than theft. When you steal a car, General Motors doesn't lose an entire product line. When there is mass counterfeiting of something digital, the original author will slowly start to lose the ability to sell the product. Why? Because the cost of a digital item is only what people are willing to pay. If the majority of people know they can get it for free (with no penalty), they will download it for free and you will have a difficult time in the future convincing them to pay for it. You essentially are competing with yourself, but $0 cost being the difference.
- ZeroGravitas 15y agoIdentity theft is called that by banks to try and distract attention from the fact that they have fallen victim to fraud and are trying to pass the consequences onto their customers. And it's mostly worked. Words have power. .