I think it's the property that is the issue at hand. Not th…
I think it's the property that is the issue at hand. Not the key that someone can use to get into the property. How the law looks at private key theft in the context of technological advancements I don't know.. But imagine if I stole the keys to your car. The point of this would be to steal the actual car. The keys are just what get you what you want: to steal someone else's property.
But I may be missing your broader point @steffenkd ..
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Not sure about it myself.
I think, that it would be theft.
But since it is just a string of hex it wouldn't be real world property, but some abstraction instead (intellectual property?).
Just curious what hardcore anarchists of whom many think that intellectual property doesn't exist, and that you can copy and use everything without compensation would say about it. Especially since quite some anarchists are into crypto currencies and depend on their private keys not being copied.
And even the utxo which you do operate on with the private keys is also just a string of hex.
I have been on the "intellectual property doesn't exist" fraction for quite some years in the past, but over the last few years I tend to agree that intellectual property makes sense.
In the end it is a human concept, same as real property. And if humanity (or a majority) of it agrees on some form of reward for inventors and content creators I probably would support it.
However, I regard copying someone elses work , by itself, as a form of flattery and compliment.
And I want to add, that the current copyright system for content creation (not patents) sucks. Bought an ebook from kobo and wanted to download it onto my kobo to read it (I use it offline without any kobo software, I just use e-pub and pdf format). Didn't work, due to DRM stuff. Found it on archive.org, downloaded it and loaded it onto my kobo in two minutes^^. Legal way took my 20 minutes for logging into account, paying, downloading, finding out that it didn't work and so on. Illegal path took me two minutes. Incentives...
Maybe the patent area sucks as well, I am not very deep into the topic.
One of the many areas where bitcoin could shine and make things easier.