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Notes -
I would disagree and say you are the one playing a semantic game here.
Taking implies that there is some thing (item) which you now have which no one else can now have because you have it.
That is simply impossible in the case we're talking about.
Again: that is not part of what it means to take something. But even if it were, that is still not a substantive objection to my point. That is nitpicking my choice of words, not actually a meaningful argument against my position.
It is, in fact, what it means to take something.
And since it is, it is also a substantive objection to your point.
And since it is a substantive objection, you have not answered it.
No, it's not a substantive objection. This is what I mean when I say you (and others) are just playing semantic games. Let's say I rephrase my argument thusly to appease your idiosyncratic definition of "take":
Stealing is to come into possession of something, or even to copy it, against the wishes of the person who owns it.
Nothing has actually changed in my argument. I've simply replaced the word "take" with a much wordier phrasing just because you're being a pedant (and an incorrect one at that). So now, you still have to address my actual position instead of playing inane word games. Which is why I said your objection is not substantive. You are attacking merely the word choice, and not the actual position I hold.
I don't know why you're so hell bent on playing semantic games. Nor do I understand where the hell you get the impression it's somehow my fault. I wasn't the one to start this pedantry about "well ackshually taking things means x". I'm simply responding to the semantic games others initiated.
Saying "this is stealing, according to a definition that I just made up and you haven't agreed to" only begs the question of why your bespoke definition should be used rather than the standard one. You can redefine terms as much as you please, but if you can't persuade others that the redefinition achieves something other than making you correct by definition, they have no reason to agree to use it.
Your position is that duplication is wrong. When others ask why it is wrong, you say that it's taking. When others point out that it doesn't actually appear to be substantively similar to central examples of "taking", since it lacks the features that makes those central examples objectionable, you complain that they aren't just taking your label as the final argument. What you have not done is address the core question here: why should we consider duplication wrong? What harm does it cause, what right does it violate, such that people have a right to protection from it? A crazy person could claim that me breathing when I visit their house is a "harm" to them, because I'm "taking" their air, and that would both be a very stupid argument, and very obviously a better argument than you've made so far.
Upthread, someone else argues that part of property rights is a right to exclusion, a right to deny access to others, not merely to possess yourself. This seems highly questionable to me, but it's at least a coherent argument.
[EDIT] - Upthread, you claim that it's wrong because what you're copying "doesn't belong to you". Of course, the clump of matter doesn't need to belong to you, because you're making a new clump of matter, so this must mean that the particular arrangement, the data, is what belongs to someone. But in what sense do ideas or data "belong" to someone? Who owns the concept of the letter "x"? Can I copyright particular numbers, or perhaps their combinations, and then charge other people for using them?
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