[adventured]

If you hire me at your company, then I take all the information, code, files, work on your big new project that you've invested all of your company's money into, and go to your competitor with it (for a handsome fee) - you're not going to proclaim 'copying' your IP et al is not stealing. Not unless you're suicidal and don't care about your employees and their jobs.

No business could survive and make long-term plans and large capital investment if that's how the world actually worked.

How about walking out of an accounting firm with private business files and handing them to competitors for a fee? Still not information stealing?

[teddyh]

Everything illegal is not “theft”. Kidnapping, for example, involves many of the same aspects of theft, but still isn’t theft. Likewise, illegal copying and corporate espionage, while they may be crimes, are not “theft”.