[Ukv]

> Using that which belongs to others without their consent is theft

Are text snippets, thumbnnails and site caches shown by search engines (on an opt-out basis) "theft"? If you draw a car, which you can do due to having seen many individually-copyrighted car designs, are you stealing from auto manufacturers? Have I just committed theft by using a portion of your comment above as a quote?

I don't claim here that statistical model fitting inherently needs to be treated the same as the above examples, but rather use examples to show that the bar of "using" is far too broad.

Legally, copyright infringement in the US requires that the works are substantially similar and not covered by Fair Use. Morally, I believe that artificial scarcity, such as evergreening of medical patents, is detrimental and needs to be prevented wherever feasible - and wouldn't call any kind of copying/sharing/piracy "theft". The digital equivalent of theft is, for example, account theft where you're actually removing the object from the owner's possession.