What if you sneak into a movie theater to sit in a near-empty auditorium for a 2pm Tuesday matinee. Nobody has "lost" anything, as in your cookie jar example. Does that make it OK?
I have actually long-wondered how theaters would fare if they pro-rated seats based on demand. Charging just a dollar or two for a Tuesday matinee seat otherwise expected to be empty would certainly drive ticket sales, and with them concession sales. What does the theater have to lose?
Totally agree that matinee prices are not low enough to match demand. I defended the MoviePass business model vigorously, see my comment history. (with that said, they do have to reimburse studios for each ticket sold, so the theater doesn't have full discretion)
But that's totally irrelevant to this conversation. If the theater is charging $5, or $2, you still can't just sneak in the back door without paying.
I hope that you would agree that if you sneak into a movie theater to sit in a near-empty auditorium for a 2pm Tuesday matinee, then it's something very, very different from theft?
Like, people can argue if it's as bad as theft or not as bad than theft (I would definitely argue that it's substantially less bad than theft, but I know that some people would disagree), but no matter what, such an action is not theft, it's something else.