Hmm, I think the victims of organized corporate espionage might see this completely different. Its totally enough if "agents" of a certain country known for not really caring about copyright copy the plans for your new product. They dont have to delete yoour original plans to do damage.
The damage is different. In actual historical stealing use of the item is a zero sum game soof you take it you deprive use of the item to the person deemed the rightful owner (no comment or judgemebt on how that deeming happened for the purpose of this comment). This is breech of contract. It is not a zero sum game. There is no deprivation of use for the person deemed the owner. Instead there is an ambiguous effect on revenue because you followed the natural market outcome for information and distributed it freely. Maybe you decreased revenue potential because the person would have otherwise paid, maybe the person would have otherwise gone without the information so no revenue effect but deadweight loss to society of that person acting in a less informed way, maybe you increased revenue because the one freebie caused a purchase that otherwise wouldn't have happened. It is situation dependent but in any situation it is not correct to call this stealing despite the marketing efforts of copyright owners to get it mislabelled as such.
