I looked up stealing to ground this comment of mine:

> stealing: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice

I admire Ben for being so direct. I wonder why we fetishize, herbicide and normalize theft, even deception today. When did this become normal, and why draw the line at digital creation and not just allow theft of physical objects, too? (I mean I get the arguments about copying someones digital creation doesn't really mean you took what they had from them, you just made a copy, though this doesn't logically apply to if I also physically stole someones product and made a copy since copyright/patent protection likely applies)

the very point is that theft means you no longer have something since someone else has. copying is you still have it and someone else now too. there is no harm done by copying, except you actually believe that exclusivity as a separate concept is important to you. (debatable, I don't).

> fetishize, herbicide and normalize

I’m very curious what “herbicide” was an auto-complete for here…

ChatGPT guesses "heroicize".