Bloke, I gave a definition and a case study in my original post. I've stuck to it consistently.
If you return a car, then you borrowed it, rather than stole it. Even if the judge rules that you did steal it (it was unusable by the owner while you had it) then the damages are significantly different. The car was stolen, but the damage has been lessened (remedied) by the return of the property. This will be reflected in sentencing. This is why there is a huge range of sentences available to a judge. All damages are not equal.
Here is the major difference between digital products and physical products; and why it is much more difficult to steal a digital product.
There is no scarcity of digital products. Everyone on earth can have a copy, and it doesn't deprive anyone else of anything.
COPYING something isn't the same as STEALING something. I'm sorry you are having trouble with this.
Seriously, guy. Perhaps my explanation was imperfect, but this is literally the first year Law on torts.
To determine what offence was committed, an assessment of the damages must be made. In what way or ways was the offended party damaged or harmed? Specifically.
Depriving you of your work truck so you can't get transport to work and you can't do your job is different from making photocopies of your novel.
I don't know how to make it any more clear. I apologize that I don't have the ability to reach you with reason and convey basic, industry standard definitions that have been in use for more than a century.
If you return a car, then you borrowed it, rather than stole it. Even if the judge rules that you did steal it (it was unusable by the owner while you had it) then the damages are significantly different. The car was stolen, but the damage has been lessened (remedied) by the return of the property. This will be reflected in sentencing.
No, it's still theft even if you return it. The theft occurred. Yes, the damages can be considered less, and that can be considered in sentencing by the judges discretion, not by the law itself (unless we've got some retarded sentencing guidelines trying to rule on the minutia of the case)
It's the same reason why kidnapping includes moving a person one foot. It's still considered a serious felony.
I never said copying was stealing, you're trying to conflate them and telling me I'm conflating them. This is because you don't have a clear understanding of theft.
Depriving you of your work truck so you can't get transport to work and you can't do your job is different from making photocopies of your novel.
Yes, and I've told you they're different.
And stealing your work truck isn't different from stealing the digitial copy of your novel, beyond the fact that your work truck is more objectively expensive.
What would not be fine is for books to be protected by copyright and paywall, not purchased, and still be data mined for their material without compensation to the owner. This is especially true with something as vast as a for-profit business as an AI algorithm.
And then called it "theft of the material."
So let me walk you through this with some questions:
If I buy a book and read it, then write a novel inspired by what I learned, did I steal from the original author? No? Then why is it different when a computer does the reading?
How about making a statistical model of word frequency with a pencil and paper? That is, counting the frequency of words and their position in a sentence. Laborious, but anyone with a working knowledge of statistics could do it. Is it different when a computer performs the calculations? Has anything been stolen in either case? What if I apply that model to a new work to see if they have matching statistical fingerprints? Is anything stolen yet?
When you "steal" something, can the original owner still use it? When you copy a digital file, can the original owner still use theirs?
You keep saying "digital assets can be stolen" but you haven't explained how copying something constitutes theft when nobody loses access to anything. That's because you're conflating unauthorized access (hacking into a system) with copyright infringement (making copies). By the way, neither one of those is theft as defined under the law.
Here's what you can look up if you're genuinely interested: Dowling v. United States, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Notice how they're all different laws covering different things? That's because copying, stealing, and hacking are different acts with different legal frameworks.
The reason this matters isn't semantic pedantry - it's that damages, defenses, and remedies are completely different. Copyright has fair use exceptions. Theft doesn't.
For everyone else reading: this is why words have specific meanings in law. "Theft" isn't just "taking something you shouldn't."
I didn't believe that in my original comment I had to prove that the theft of digital assets was physically possible because I assumed everyone could understand that concept, and what I was being tasked with describing was about how a LLM was different from text to speech. I originally assumed that you would want a conversation about the concepts around IP's, copyrights, and things like that. It never occurred to me that you do not believe that digital assets are even things that can be stolen. Philosophically, you're starting from a position that all digital assets do not even count as property, which is why it is impossible to steal them. That positions is objectively absurd.
"theft of the material" implied, originally, that we were talking about intellectual property and associated damages. I didn't know that you rejected the concept of theft when applied to any digital asset. I thought we were at least in the same book when I was responding to you, though not the same page.
It would be like if you said you think tomatoes are not a vegetable. Then, I respond by explaining how they are fruit. Then you turn around and say, "Gizortnik, tomatoes are not a food, and thus can not be a vegetable, let alone this weird idea that they are a fruit." That caught me off guard because now we're not talking about fruits or vegetables at all. We can't agree on what food is, so arguing about a sub-set of food makes no sense, and any reference I had towards that is no longer useful in the conversation.
You keep saying "digital assets can be stolen" but you haven't explained how copying something
You have gone back to intentionally conflating theft with copying, again.
You are literally unwilling to accept that a file on your computer can be physically removed from your possession.
"Theft" isn't just "taking something you shouldn't."
That's fairly reductive, but it's about right. Yes, things that you take without permission are, in fact, theft. Even if no one noticed, or if you gave them back. That's how property rights exist in the first place. This is why I'm saying you aren't even treating digital assets as property.
Bloke, I gave a definition and a case study in my original post. I've stuck to it consistently.
If you return a car, then you borrowed it, rather than stole it. Even if the judge rules that you did steal it (it was unusable by the owner while you had it) then the damages are significantly different. The car was stolen, but the damage has been lessened (remedied) by the return of the property. This will be reflected in sentencing. This is why there is a huge range of sentences available to a judge. All damages are not equal.
Here is the major difference between digital products and physical products; and why it is much more difficult to steal a digital product.
There is no scarcity of digital products. Everyone on earth can have a copy, and it doesn't deprive anyone else of anything.
COPYING something isn't the same as STEALING something. I'm sorry you are having trouble with this.
Seriously, guy. Perhaps my explanation was imperfect, but this is literally the first year Law on torts.
To determine what offence was committed, an assessment of the damages must be made. In what way or ways was the offended party damaged or harmed? Specifically.
Depriving you of your work truck so you can't get transport to work and you can't do your job is different from making photocopies of your novel.
I don't know how to make it any more clear. I apologize that I don't have the ability to reach you with reason and convey basic, industry standard definitions that have been in use for more than a century.
No, it's still theft even if you return it. The theft occurred. Yes, the damages can be considered less, and that can be considered in sentencing by the judges discretion, not by the law itself (unless we've got some retarded sentencing guidelines trying to rule on the minutia of the case)
It's the same reason why kidnapping includes moving a person one foot. It's still considered a serious felony.
I never said copying was stealing, you're trying to conflate them and telling me I'm conflating them. This is because you don't have a clear understanding of theft.
Yes, and I've told you they're different.
And stealing your work truck isn't different from stealing the digitial copy of your novel, beyond the fact that your work truck is more objectively expensive.
Gizortnik, you originally wrote:
And then called it "theft of the material." So let me walk you through this with some questions: If I buy a book and read it, then write a novel inspired by what I learned, did I steal from the original author? No? Then why is it different when a computer does the reading?
How about making a statistical model of word frequency with a pencil and paper? That is, counting the frequency of words and their position in a sentence. Laborious, but anyone with a working knowledge of statistics could do it. Is it different when a computer performs the calculations? Has anything been stolen in either case? What if I apply that model to a new work to see if they have matching statistical fingerprints? Is anything stolen yet?
When you "steal" something, can the original owner still use it? When you copy a digital file, can the original owner still use theirs?
You keep saying "digital assets can be stolen" but you haven't explained how copying something constitutes theft when nobody loses access to anything. That's because you're conflating unauthorized access (hacking into a system) with copyright infringement (making copies). By the way, neither one of those is theft as defined under the law.
Here's what you can look up if you're genuinely interested: Dowling v. United States, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Notice how they're all different laws covering different things? That's because copying, stealing, and hacking are different acts with different legal frameworks. The reason this matters isn't semantic pedantry - it's that damages, defenses, and remedies are completely different. Copyright has fair use exceptions. Theft doesn't. For everyone else reading: this is why words have specific meanings in law. "Theft" isn't just "taking something you shouldn't."
I didn't believe that in my original comment I had to prove that the theft of digital assets was physically possible because I assumed everyone could understand that concept, and what I was being tasked with describing was about how a LLM was different from text to speech. I originally assumed that you would want a conversation about the concepts around IP's, copyrights, and things like that. It never occurred to me that you do not believe that digital assets are even things that can be stolen. Philosophically, you're starting from a position that all digital assets do not even count as property, which is why it is impossible to steal them. That positions is objectively absurd.
"theft of the material" implied, originally, that we were talking about intellectual property and associated damages. I didn't know that you rejected the concept of theft when applied to any digital asset. I thought we were at least in the same book when I was responding to you, though not the same page.
It would be like if you said you think tomatoes are not a vegetable. Then, I respond by explaining how they are fruit. Then you turn around and say, "Gizortnik, tomatoes are not a food, and thus can not be a vegetable, let alone this weird idea that they are a fruit." That caught me off guard because now we're not talking about fruits or vegetables at all. We can't agree on what food is, so arguing about a sub-set of food makes no sense, and any reference I had towards that is no longer useful in the conversation.
You have gone back to intentionally conflating theft with copying, again.
You are literally unwilling to accept that a file on your computer can be physically removed from your possession.
That's fairly reductive, but it's about right. Yes, things that you take without permission are, in fact, theft. Even if no one noticed, or if you gave them back. That's how property rights exist in the first place. This is why I'm saying you aren't even treating digital assets as property.