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In reply to the discussion: Ruling could force Americans to decrypt laptops [View all]caseymoz
(5,763 posts)People have to keep in mind, when thinking about these, that there's a huge difference between material things and these ideas we now have dancing around in electrons. Sometimes these "real world" analogies have to be examined pretty closely, and what looks self-apparent isn't.
A tangent: This is also true in regards to intellectual property. "Stealing" them, whatever the morality of it is, is quite different from "stealing" something in the material world. If you "steal" a car in the material world, you simply take it. If you did it in the way you "stole" a movie, you would make a copy of it, drive it away, while the owner would still have the original. If stealing, historically, were like that, there would be nothing wrong with it. A key component of stealing is that you deprive the owner of its use.