
An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
Stealing entails physically going to a store, taking something off a shelf, and walking out of the store without paying for it. In doing so, the thief takes tangible goods out of the store.
We've already had this discussion. I haven't seen anything relatively persuasive showing that stealing must be applied to something tangible. In fact, the only argument seems to be, "if I take something tangible, the company loses
that particular item, whereas if I copy some data, the company still has that item." I've explained my reasoning against this, but maybe another example will help:
Say some company has a large stock of chairs, and I take one. That company still has a large stock of chairs (it's not like they don't have anything to sit down on now), so they aren't losing anything.
You can argue that now they no longer have
that particular chair, since I've taken it, and because I didn't buy it, I am stealing. Now turn this to gaming. If I take a pirated copy of a game, that company no longer has
that particular copy of the game, and because I didn't buy it, I am stealing.
The only difference in this example is "finite" versus "infinite," which we already thoroughly discussed as well.
The legitimacy to copy a game as a backup is even questionable. If you break or lose a chair, unless it's under warranty or other arrangement by the company/distributor, you can't get a replica for free, but you'd have to buy another chair. If you break or lose a game, some could argue the same thing. That is, unless, you consider that when you are buying a game, you are actually buying a license to play it, in which case, you should be able to keep personal backups and whatnot.