[_heimdall]

This a a very different situation. Stores are selling products or services, and they explicitly put prices on the products.

Content available freely online is much different, as there is no price and at best the hope is that the consumer sees an ad or sponsorship and that the content creator has accurate analytics as to how many saw the ads.

Your analogy would be more akin to someone stealing access to paywalled content somehow. In that case a price was put on the content and someone took if anyway, much like shoplifting.

[Dlanv]

Video streaming sites have a cost to create.

The price is ads or paying for a paid service like YouTube premium.

So you're still stealing, you just convince yourself it's ok, and that's fine.

[erremerre]

If you go to the store on summer to enjoy the aircon, but you dont buy anything, because you just go there with a book and read your book and leave.

Are you stealing?

The aircon have a cost. Cold fresh air cost electricity that costs money.

The price is to buy stuff from the shopping centre, that gives money to the stores that pay a rent price for the local that pays for the aircon bill.

[zlg_codes]

Stealing, ie theft, requires that you deprive another person of the benefit of their property.

This is precisely why we cannot compare copying to stealing.

[_heimdall]

I'm not saying that ad blocking isn't stealing, there could be a case for that especially if T&Cs specifically require that ads aren't skipped, blocked, or avoided.

My only point there was that shoplifting and ad blocking are very different things. Stores don't make their products freely available to anyone willing to walk past enough ads along the way.