[aditya42]

Denying a resource would also include denying benefits from that resource, right?

In that case, if you distribute say, a movie, for free without permission from the publisher, you're effectively "taking" his "money" that he would've earned from the display of his material in a controlled environment. Wouldn't that be stealing?

[jacquesm]

For that to be true in individual cases you'd have to come up with some pretty hard evidence that a sale would indeed have been consummated.

In the case of the pirate bay the quantity is so large that some aggregate effect can be postulated without stretching credulity, and I think that is the major reason why this judgment sticks even if there is not a single item of hard proof of any lost sale directly caused by the pirate bay.

[sophacles]

Sweet. I now have a way to get back all money I have ever put into bad stocks. The "stole" my "right" to earn money from a good stock by sucking! Put the bankers in jai!

</sarcasm>