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

▲

anileated 2 days ago | parent [-]

> 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

> for over a thousand years theft has mean taking something from someone permanently

Nothing in your comment is in contradiction to mine, or suggests that the word has been “overloaded”. That’s what theft is. Intellectual property is property, trade secrets are property.

▲

hdgvhicv 2 days ago | parent [-]

> with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

You denied that deprivation was ever part of the term

Your statement was

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

Where it’s literally there in dozens of definitions across the English language.

“Intellectual property” is a new legal construct, at most 500 years old, compared with physical ownership which dates back millennia. The term itself is a mere 200 years old, but mainly ignored in the US until just a few decades ago.

	▲	anileated 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I wrote: > There is nothing in the word “theft” that implies depriving someone of physical property. It is always depriving of something. Just not always of physical something. The rest of my comment goes on about depriving of non-physical things.