But clearly, people who take a stricter stance regarding "intellectual property" want to use the most common definition of "to steal", of taking someone's physi

But clearly, people who take a stricter stance regarding "intellectual property" want to use the most common definition of "to steal", of taking someone's physical object away. A weasel word, or a little dishonest, since we are dealing with a completely different type of situation: - When someone copies your content, you keep it. A loss happens on an abstract level of potential lost profit etc. - Someone else just might have had the same thought process as you and distilled some widely available piece of information into the same joke as the official joke author. Who owns it? - The joke author has probably processed a vast amount of humor, and information in general and inevitably, unconsciously builds his joke on this foundation without being able to "attribute" anything. I'd say if you have a good case you can do fine without using the s-word.