Apparently I need to clarify.
Can you explain why you consider those three methods/actions to be theft?
I'm not trying to insult your analogies, I'm not stating I approve any of those methods/actions, and I am most certainly not stating that I approve of theft. (I am staunchly against it.) I would just like to hear your argument in order to enhance my viewpoint.
Look, I'm trying to learn here. You sound like you have quite a bit of conviction, and you're making some allegations I haven't heard before. I would like to hear your rationale in a non-analogous form.
If that isn't clear, my apologies, but I'm not sure how much clearer I can get...
I'm sorry, I did misunderstand you.
Let's say you have a job where you have the luxury of working remotely. Everything the employees do is logged and attributed to the respective employee, so that the boss can keep track of who's doing what. Being a smart techie, you realize it'd be possible to modify a little bit of other people's work to make it look like yours. You could probably get away with it, and in the long run look like you're a lot more productive than everyone else. Would you do it?
Taking other people's work and making it look like yours, is stealing their work. No?
Or, you have a different job where you have the luxury of working remotely. You know the boss only checks on your work once or twice a week, the same time every week. You realize that all he cares really is about the total amount of work done by the group, and no one would ever know if made you sure you were working when the boss was there, and goof off the rest of the time. Obviously everyone couldn't get away with this, but you, or maybe you and your buddy could probably get away with it. Would you do it?
Getting paid for something you didn't do is stealing, is it not? Perhaps I should clarify, the above example you look like you're putting in your 40 hours, but you're really putting in 16.
Or the investment you just heard about, where you are guaranteed to get $6 back for every $5 you put in. Guaranteed. It's a privileged investment, only so many people are allowed to be in. Eventually it'll open to the public, but for now, it's invitation only. Being the smart guy (or gal) you are, you do the math and realize something is funny about this. But hey, free money, why not? Would you do it?
Robbing Peter to pay Paul usually looks acceptable when you are Paul. There are no free lunches, that $1 is coming from somewhere. And no, it's not interest. A local bank around here lies through their teeth with the advertisement "great interest rate, 1.5%!" Perhaps I should clarify the above analogy, you don't get that $6 in 5 years, you get it in a month.
M