Bitcoin is an agreement by the worldwide blockchain that you personally control the fate of anywhere from 0 to 21 million bitcoins. You can hoard them, send them to someone else, or throw away your access to them. But you can control no more than 21 million coins, because there will never be more than 21 million bitcoins. See http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/161/how-many-bitc...
I'm trying to figure out what you're saying. It seems like if your arguments apply to Bitcoin, then they would also apply to any other kind of good with limited supply, such as gold. Why would anyone be outraged when gold is stolen? Because people believe gold has value. The reason gold is valuable is due to its scarcity, not because gold is inherently valuable. People rarely use gold for its unique conductivity properties, whereas they usually use it for its scarcity. Same with Bitcoin.
So if your arguments apply to Bitcoin and gold, then what is being said? I'm curious to know your position on this. Not because I'm trying to defend or prove anything, but because your ideas tend to be interesting.
I think maybe people here are just talking past each other, so maybe it would help to articulate in detail?
Anyone with a copy of the private key of a wallet can transfer all the bitcoins from that wallet to a different wallet, i.e. a wallet that only they control.
The analogy is imperfect sure. Copying a movie doesn't keep you from selling that movie to someone else. But the only thing that keeps you from double-speding a bitcoin is the external confirmation process. Bitcoins aren't inherently scarce--the protocol makes them that way, just like copyright makes digital works artificially scarce.
I have never claimed that anyone can steal bits. I said that people can steal bitcoins. Bitcoins are not just bits, any more than the USD in my bank account is just bits. If you take money from my bank account without my permission, I hope we can agree that you have stolen money from me. The same applies to bitcoins for precisely the same reasons.
> The analogy is imperfect sure. Copying a movie doesn't keep you from selling that movie to someone else.
But that's exactly the problem. Larceny (and theft, more generally) is traditionally defined as the taking of someone's property with the intention of depriving them of that property.
> But the only thing that keeps you from double-speding a bitcoin is the external confirmation process. Bitcoins aren't inherently scarce--the protocol makes them that way, just like copyright makes digital works artificially scarce.
I'm not sure what your point is here. Bitcoins are not inherently scarce, because they don't inherently exist. Someone had to invent and implement the Bitcoin network, obviously. We are (hopefully) agreeing on the definition of the word "bitcoin," and thus we would agree for instance that 10 years ago no bitcoins existed. You can't have a bitcoin unless the Bitcoin network exists, and thus in that sense bitcoins are inherently scarce. The same can be said of USD, or financial assets like stocks and bonds, but I would guess that we agree those can be stolen.