That is true, but it all ultimately comes down to some sort of financial loss. Car theft is damaging to the extent that the car is worth a certain amount of money. (This is ignoring the potential emotional connection which, while it can be strong, is mostly ignored in the law.) That we put car thieves in prison means that we're willing to imprison people for purely financial losses. If code theft causes a financial loss (and there's nothing inherently absurd about that as a possibility) then why wouldn't prison be a possibility there?
> If code theft causes a financial loss then why wouldn't prison be a possibility there?
The difference between stealing a car and putting it in a garage and stealing code and letting it sit on a flash drive in an office drawer is that the original owner of the car no longer has exclusive rights to use it, but the rightful owner of the code can continue to use their original property, often times exclusively. It's only when, as you eluded to, the stolen code gets used that a financial loss can be justified and I wouldn't argue against prison as a punishment.
But, I'm not really arguing that stealing code or any other intellectual property is _not_ wrong, but there really is a difference between the common analogy of stealing a car, which I think most people who do argue that position are trying to justify. I don't think that a person or company can truly claim a financial loss if they become aware of someone else or another company is in possession of their code until they have proof that the code was used either as reference or directly.
