What's unclear, exactly? Whether video documentation obtained privately belongs to the person who owns the camera and storage media? Because I think it's about as clear as it gets.

No, the prisoner did not make an allegation.

But this is the point I am making, if I have a relationship with someone at work, particularly when one person is subordinate or position of authority, then we'd simply be fired... but a prison officer will face a criminal prosecution of Misconduct in Public Office, and possibly face prison time themselves. Seems somewhat unfair for a low paying job.

> There is nothing in the word “theft” that implies depriving someone of physical property.

Of course there is. It's origin is the crime of taking of tangible property owned by someone else without consent. It did not apply to intangible property because it predates any concept of legally protected intellectual property that can be duplicated without loss.

Now, there was also the metaphorical use of theft for non-criminal / non-tangible things but poetic use of language shouldn't be confused with primary meanings. For example, "plagiarism" comes from the Latin for "kidnapping" coined playfully by a comic. It was never a crime or ever resembled actual kidnapping. If you call your poem "my baby" because of how precious it is to you, it doesn't become one. Badly editing your poem is not murder either yet you might complain in such dramatic terms.

You might want to argue something about metaphors and secondary meanings but we shouldn't consider the crime of kidnapping to mean reciting other's verses any more than a summer's day should mean temperate people. If we start taking metaphorical uses literally then you also have to start claiming silly things like most kidnapping being legal.

Only in later industrial society did the metaphor become less metaphorical in written law for criminal acts that emerged post-printing-press that were being called fraud, deception, infringement and piracy.

> deprives the owner of privacy

It's pretty metaphorical to describe such things as property that can be stolen.

With this latitude you can frame every injury as theft e.g. stabbing is the theft of good health, murder is theft of life, perjury is theft of a fair trial etc. You might choose to use such language because it's how we roll, but we also know that, as offences, they are not theft.

When an item cannot be traded or restored to the owner, is it property that can be owned and stolen or are concepts of injury, damage and destruction more legitimate?

When it comes to intellectual property, it's closer to contract law where citizens are compelled to abide by contracts the state issues and enforces. The movement of intangible theft from metaphor into law for breaching such a contract was popularised by the beneficiaries to rhetorically inflate an illusion of loss and justify severe sanctions for acts not considered unlawful for most of human history.

Theft (from Old English þeofð, cognate to thief) is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

The word has become overloaded in recent decades to mean other things as well, but for over a thousand years theft has mean taking something from someone permanently

Those are labels. Identity theft is more identity fraud. Theft of digital assets is copyright infringement.

these are deliberate attempts to shift the overton window.

Identity theft in particular is a poor term because it shifts the blame from the verifier (the one who actually got things wrong) to the victim.

"lots of theft is not theft. Like for instance, all these things that are not theft"

... Lots of murder doesn't have a victim...

.... Lots of arson doesn't involve a fire...

... Lots of trespass involves not taking a single step from your work desk ..

... War is peace, peace is war...

Sure but the difference in value is also obvious. Stevie Wonder has a business interest in controlling the release of his music, as do other parties like a production company and a publisher. And an early release may do harm to the value of such a recording. But I don't expect most organizations that put up security cameras have a business interest in monetizing the footage.

Interesting. Do you have an example of where copying data like this (something with almost no commercial value, but done without authorization, whose harm is basically the disclosure of the facts of the camera's location/positioning) was charged as theft? Because it seems like in a legal sense, copying isn't theft, but the consequences of the copy becoming generally available (say a commercial interest in the data, in the Stevie Wonder example from the sibling thread) may make the damage of the copy and subsequent release obvious. I'm also curious what has recently been enacted to cover this scenario if you have a ready example?

I believe you and heed your warning. I think it's good to understand these things too though.

I think I did understand that, specifically contrasting real property and intellectual property, but maybe wrongfully implied that theft could only apply to real property.

However, is there any argument for security camera footage like this instance to be considered a trade secret? Isn't that the only type of intellectual property it might be? It seems like if the business wasn't planning to derive economic value from the sale of the security camera footage (which seems like a generally safe assumption) it would fail to acquire trade secret protections.