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I would quibble with your definition of stealing in the case of copying a content company's product. Certainly it's not in the content company's best interest for one person to purchase a CD and then make a copy for his neighbor. But what makes it stealing? The legality of shrink-wrap licensing can be debated, but in many people's minds the action is not disimilar to loaning the CD, or making photocopies of books at a library. Of course the moral behavior would be to respect the publisher's wish to receive payment from each possessor of a CD with those same arrangements of bits, although that course of action might be morally overridden due to certain extenuating circumstances (such as those encountered by the author).


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