Copyright violations are not theft because they do not deprive the owner of the work they have created.
In your mechanic example you have deprived the mechanic of his time without compensation. He does not have the time he spent back, nor can he sell his time again.
Your electricty argument is getting a little absurd. I would argue the fact that anybody who designed a building to have an eletric outlet open on the sidewalk is a dumbass, anybody who charges $20 for the juice to charge a cell phone is a jackass, and anybody who pays it is a moron. Further more you are assuming that even solar generated electricity is not a scarce resource when it is. But for your argument for some reason the city may have needed the amount of electricity being generated by the solar array to preform some necessary function and you have deprived them of that (say electricuting the guy that designed the building.)
The fact that a song generated in digital format and shared via P2P is never a scarce resource. My downloading media never deprives any else of anything.
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I would consider both examples to be stealing because something that was a scarce resource was removed.
I consider file sharing(of copyrighted material) to be in copyright violation and not stealing.
Both are illegal, just not the same thing.
To step in here
Copyright violations are not theft because they do not deprive the owner of the work they have created.
In your mechanic example you have deprived the mechanic of his time without compensation. He does not have the time he spent back, nor can he sell his time again.
Your electricty argument is getting a little absurd. I would argue the fact that anybody who designed a building to have an eletric outlet open on the sidewalk is a dumbass, anybody who charges $20 for the juice to charge a cell phone is a jackass, and anybody who pays it is a moron.
Further more you are assuming that even solar generated electricity is not a scarce resource when it is. But for your argument for some reason the city may have needed the amount of electricity being generated by the solar array to preform some necessary function and you have deprived them of that (say electricuting the guy that designed the building.)
The fact that a song generated in digital format and shared via P2P is never a scarce resource. My downloading media never deprives any else of anything.