Unless he took a physical copy off of a shelf somewhere, he didn't steal anything. Pirated, ripped, copied, used without paying for, there are about 20 possible verbs to describe the act of using software without purchasing a license.
Stealing is not one of them.
I know I'm beating this horse fairly hard, but it's something that people need to be aware of.
Meh. When I create software and someone "takes away" my ability to earn income from it, it feels like stealing.
The "IP infringement is not stealing" line is just what people say when they want something for nothing and they don't want to feel bad about inflicting financial damage upon the original author.
> The "IP infringement is not stealing" line is just what people say when they want something for nothing and they don't want to feel bad about inflicting financial damage upon the original author.
That doesn't make any sense. I don't think anybody is seriously arguing in this thread that copyright infringement is correct or ethical - what we're instead arguing is that, despite the best efforts of the *AA groups, "stealing" is a different crime than "copying without permission". The fact that there's a supreme court case backing this line of reasoning up (in plain language, no less) makes this conflation of terms even less forgivable.
Call the crime what it is.
>When I create software and someone "takes away" my ability to earn income from it..
Except if I copy something of yours without permission, I haven't taken away your ability to do anything. And I challenge you to prove otherwise.
Since your audience includes people who hope to be paid from their creative efforts, your argument that not paying for said creative efforts is perfectly fine may meet with disapproval.
TL:DR; it doesn't matter what semantic games you try to pull, if you're a cheap bastard you're still an ass.
Well, I guess you can, but you're stretching your ethical credibility.