Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0].

https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...

Funky quote:

> Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.

There's plenty of startups gone legitimate.

Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas.

Plenty of people have ideas.

We only really see those that successfully cross it.

Small things EULA breaches, consumer licenses being used commercially for example.

There's no credible evidence Spotify built their company and business on pirated music.

This is a narrative that gets passed around in certain circles to justify stealing content.

"Stealing" isn't an apt term here. Stealing a thing permanently deprives the owner of the thing. What you're describing is copyright infringement, not stealing.

In this context, stealing is often used as a pejorative term to make piracy sound worse than it is. Except for mass distribution, piracy is often regarded as a civil wrong, and not a crime.

Then it is not possible to 'steal' an idea? Afaik 'to steal'is simply to take without permission. If the thing is abstract, then you might not have deprived the original owner of that thing. If the thing is a physical object, then the implication is tou now have physical possession (in which case your definition seemingly holds)

edit/addendum: considering this a bit more - the extent to which the original party is deprived of the stolen thing is pertinent for awarding damages. For example, imagine a small entity stealing from a large one, like a small creator steals dungeon and dragons rules. That doesn't deprive Hasbro of DnD, but it is still theft (we're assuming a verbatim copy here lifted directly from DnD books)

The example that I was pondering were shows in russia that were almost literally "the sampsons." Did that stop the Simpson's from airing in the US, its primary market? No, but it was still theft, something was taken without permission.