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The exclusive right to control the exploitation of your creations is something that can be stolen though, technically speaking. Because if someone else appropriates control over what can be done with your work, the exclusive control over it is taken away from you. By the definition earlier, that's theft.


If nobody has exclusiveness afterwards, then it was just destroyed, not stolen.


If I steal your car and then destroy it, it's not right to say it was "just destroyed". In both cases the original possessor is deprived of something.


Well, you temporarily had my car then. In the case of exclusivity, it's not temporarily with the unauthorized copier.

It is deprivation of exclusivity though, I agree.


The definition given earlier was: "A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"


I am not sure we can treat an abstract notion like "exclusivity" as property.

If we do, what if someone has exclusive knowledge of some algorithm, and then someone else discovers it too? Is he a thief?




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