I validly compare it to theft because the pedantics have to stop. The differences are minute.
When an illegal copy is made...
1) They can't sell a copy to the person who received the illicit copy. (Loss of sale, same result as your #1).
2) Costs incurred in creating and distributing the book won't come back (Measurable financial loss due to #1, same result as your #2).
So, no, on an abstract level, it is still a form of theft. You're giving away something you don't have the rights to give away: an additional copy of an eBook.
I do appreciate your thoughtful response. I just see the argument of "piracy isn't theft" as flimsy, legally questionable, and existent solely as a pedantic means of justifying a crime. The person with the pirated material directly gained from a measurable loss deliberately and directly inflicted upon another person. That is the most distilled definition of theft possible.
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I validly compare it to theft because the pedantics have to stop. The differences are minute.
When an illegal copy is made...
1) They can't sell a copy to the person who received the illicit copy. (Loss of sale, same result as your #1).
2) Costs incurred in creating and distributing the book won't come back (Measurable financial loss due to #1, same result as your #2).
So, no, on an abstract level, it is still a form of theft. You're giving away something you don't have the rights to give away: an additional copy of an eBook.
I do appreciate your thoughtful response. I just see the argument of "piracy isn't theft" as flimsy, legally questionable, and existent solely as a pedantic means of justifying a crime. The person with the pirated material directly gained from a measurable loss deliberately and directly inflicted upon another person. That is the most distilled definition of theft possible.
I still disagree, but I respect your position.