by scotty79 | 2026-02-20 20:52:34+00:00
> As in, hacking into a company's servers and copying their customer data, would be stealing, yes?

I think stealing is when you remove possession and acquire it yourself. So if the hacker also deleted the information they copied then I'd call it stealing. The sheer act of accessing information not intended for publication, which is the main issue here, if data was not deleted, is more akin to eavesdropping than to stealing.

> Now, if you're instead an employee of that company, and have access to their customer data (you're holding it), would you then agree that making a copy and selling it to somebody else, would be stealing?

I'd say the same. Not really stealing. More like violating an agreement about the borrowed data. The crime doesn't stem from the nature of data or ownership but rather from violating signed agreement about keeping borrowed, private data to yourself. If no agreement was made or the agreement contained unlawful clauses, no crime.

> Or consider if you rent a VHS tape, does that give you ownership of the movie, and let you copy it as you want?

Since the movie is out, the information is no longer private. So requiring me to keep the movie to myself might be and example of what should be an unlawful clause in data borrowing agreements. Because that's something you can't reasonably enforce.

Same thing as if you leave your bike in public, out of view of the cameras unlocked. You are practically not afforded protections for your stuff in public places if you didn't reasonably protected it yourself.

If you publish your stuff, society doesn't owe you protection.

You might consider the game I bought, borrowed data. And it's fine. I might even abide by the rules of the borrow I actually agreed to. But if I download some stuff from the internet, I have no agreement with you so there are no rules to abide by.

> If you store your code on a git server hosted by Microsoft, does that mean MS owns your code?

Yes. Unless we have an agreement in which they declare they are going to keep it private and actually delete it on demand. In absence of agreement their ownership of the copy that I give them should be assumed. That's literally how data works.

> If you hand in your laptop for repair, does that give the repair shop carte blance to make a copy of your hard drive?

You are conjuring situations where the problem is not the ownership but privacy protection. In practical situations I am assuming they will make a copy of my drive and so do the people organizing computer repair, that's why the general advice is to clean the drive before you hand it over. If you don't want that, companies might sign a special agreement that they won't access private data on the device you handed them. Good luck enforcing that.

Again it has nothing to do with ownership.

> Is the postal service allowed to read all your letters?

Eavesdropping. Completely irrelevant to data ownership.

> The crux of my position is that simply holding something, does not mean you own it.

It means that. Unless it was borrowed or stolen.

> You seem to agree that physical items can be held by somebody who's not the owner, so why can data not?

It can be borrowed, stolen or owned.

> To continue on with the bike example, what if I know you're out of town for a week. Then, by using your bike I'm certainly not depriving you of it.

I definitely wouldn't call it stealing it if I'm never deprived of it. Rather borrowing without agreement.

> Then, by using your bike I'm certainly not depriving you of it. You might argue that I'm lowering its value by using it, but would you not then agree that piracy lowers the value of intellectual property?

I could agree with all that. But the actual punishment should be proportional to the damage.

And what's the damage done by a kid playing pirated game who'd never buy it? Zero.

What if you repaired my bike while riding it? Maybe I should owe you for the repairs?

What if a kid who plays a pirated game tells about it and somebody else buys a copy? That's improving the value of intellectual property.

Given marketing budgets, hype generated by pirates is worth millions. Piracy is the reason Windows is the most popular operating system. Piracy is the reason many games and other software succeeded. Piracy is not your problem. Obscurity is.