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Theft

Submitted by Philip Brewer on December 21, 2007 - 11:06.

There are whole treatises written on what is theft. (Here's one: http://www.lawteacher.net/PDF/TA%201968.pdf.)

Intent is one factor--you have to intend to deprive the owner of the thing for it to be theft. (So, if your coworker leaves his toolbox in the back of your truck and you drive off with it, that isn't theft--you took something that wasn't yours, but you had no intent to deprive the owner.)

If you take a loaf of bread with the intent to feed your family (and with utter indifference to whether you are depriving the owner of the loaf of bread), one can at least argue about whether it meets the definition of theft.

As you go on to say, though, it is the ethical rather than the definitional argument that's interesting.

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