Theft is a very forced metaphor for software piracy

[Slimebeast]

Onyxmeth said:

Slimebeast said:

Of course piracy is theft.

The thief's argument is this stupid 'nobody is harmed if I make a copy'.

But what about taxes? Analogically you could say 'nobody is harmed if I don't pay taxes'. But fact is that the supposed receivers of the taxes do get harmed, as they don't get the resources they should have, and society condemns the act of not paying taxes, and tax evasion is seen as a serious crime by almost everybody, punished just as hard as theft is.

How is piracy theft? Every piracy case I've ever heard of has been tried under copyright infringement. Every case where someone brings a garbage bag into Walmart and stuffs it full of videogames gets tried under theft. They are both harshly punished, but they are not the same crime.

For technical reasons. If you define theft from a wider perspective than just from a 'law-technical' perspective, then piracy just like tax evasion is a form of theft.

Or what else lay-mans term do we have for the phenomenon where people refuse to pay for services or don't pay their taxes? Un-altruism??