Q&A: Theft
Theft
Question
According to the Rabbi’s view that there is a prohibition of theft in downloads and the like—if content has already been burned onto an existing disc, meaning the act of theft has already been done, is there a prohibition on using it since restitution is not possible, or are those two issues not dependent on one another?
Thank you very much
Answer
The theft is in the use, not in the burning. Why should the creator care if you burn it, so long as you do not use it? There is no stolen object here. What is stolen here is the information. It is like someone who has information about a patent, and you take a copy of it in a sealed envelope and keep it that way. That is not theft.
Discussion on Answer
There is no such thing as one-time use of a disc. In order to use it, it has to be purchased. In my opinion, one should pay the price of the disc. True, one could discuss whether perhaps one should pay the cost of producing the disc rather than its market price. But I do not think so.
How does one estimate the payment for the stolen use?
If we were to say that the theft happens at the time of copying, one could say that the copier stole an amount equal to what the disc sells for on the market.
But according to your view, that the theft happens at the time of use, then apparently the payment for a one-time use would be lower. But when one uses it again and again, the cumulative price could be higher than the price of the disc when bought in a store.
What do you think?