[zaroth]

I was making a slightly different distinction; between taking a copy of something which is available to buy/rent publicly, and taking a copy of something which is a “trade secret” as in the secret sauce or secret recipe which makes your product special.

Taking a copy of something which is available to buy without paying is perhaps depriving the company of one sale, or not if you weren’t going to buy it but would happen to look at it for free. In some cases this free copy can even have positive net expected value, e.g. in the case where you read a book or watch a movie without paying for it and then tell people how great it is.

However in the case of stealing trade secrets it directly undercuts the entire value proposotion of the company, particularly since trade secrets are not patented so anyone is free to replicate the result and sell it in the marketplace, presuming that they independently invented the same process.

So taking a copy of a trade secret is considered espionage or corporate warfare and is a direct attack on a company in a way that personally ripping a copy of DVD doesn’t come close.

[PurpleBoxDragon]

Wouldn't this depend upon how it is used? If I take someone's copy of a game and make it available for all to download, it can deprive the company of many sales. If I take Coca Cola's trade secret formula and research it for my own curiosity, but then do nothing with it, they would lose nothing.

Would the ability of the company to challenge the sharing of the game really make a major distinction, especially since it would be possible to host the website in a country that doesn't care enough to take it down?

Of course, in the case in the linked article, I think it is reasonable to assume this wasn't done just for sating some curiosity.