I never said it was only semantically different, only that you were making a semantic argument: namely, citing the semantic distinction between copying and stealing as grounds for one being acceptable and the other not (“stealing” is wrong but I’m “copying”), ignoring that the injustice against the work’s creator is not pragmatically different. Practically speaking, the author is equally robbed whether you “copy” or “steal”; therefore, arguing that copying is not stealing obscures the heart of the matter behind a semantic distinction.
I never said it was only semantically different, only that you were making a semantic argument: namely, citing the semantic distinction between copying and stealing as grounds for one being acceptable and the other not (“stealing” is wrong but I’m “copying”), ignoring that the injustice against the work’s creator is not pragmatically different. Practically speaking, the author is equally robbed whether you “copy” or “steal”; therefore, arguing that copying is not stealing obscures the heart of the matter behind a semantic distinction.
That wasn’t me you were talking to initially; that was TheLeadenSea. You’ll have to ask them, not me.
Oh, fair enough