“Apple piracy is a problem,” said Lynnell Brandt, chief executive officer of Proprietary Variety Management, the Yakima firm hired to handle the Cosmic Crisp rollout. “Some are propagating trees without permission. Some are stolen in the middle of the night.”
While I agree², their use of “steal” makes sense in the analogy because the apple doesn’t belong to the “thief”; besides, you can’t pirate an apple
Evidently you can!