One does not merely copy the numbers in a bank account when committing theft. The key part is depriving the original owner of the use of the item.
Whether you think piracy is right or wrong, there is a crucial difference between traditionally understood stealing or theft, in that the original owner no longer has the thing. With copyright infringement that’s not the case.
As for piracy, of course it's wrong, though far less serious than what I responded to.
> depriving the original owner of the use of the item
When someone invests to make a film, do you think the use of the resulting film to the owner is to watch it or sell it?
To break it down, did someone invest millions to make millions, or did someone pay millions to watch one movie?
You know the answer and thus we know that stealing a copy without paying does does in fact deprive the original owner of the use of the item, which was always to sell copies of it, that's the reason and criteria for its existence.
At small scale though the industry still makes do, so it's less serious than stealing for example, a company (e.g. their information). Every act of piracy also wasn't technically a stolen sale, because not everyone stealing would ever have bought it if stealing wasn't an option.
Well actually (Yeah I’m going to well actually you) many movies are quite literally produced in such a way that structures the production companies to not make any money and instead shift any profits up the pyramid while extracting the maximum value of possible tax credits and grants offered any number of political entities, as well as disbursing themselves from several liabilities.
On paper many incredibly successful films lose money. The game is rigged. The industry more than makes do.
People are free to draw their own lines. I pay for some things and don’t pay for others as far as digital content goes. The structure of it doesn’t even necessarily fit into this clean cut idea however. If I pay for Prime and download something that I could watch via prime ( and I do, because I’d rather watch it in my preferred video play whenever and not only if I have an internet connection or on specific devices or god forbid the thing I’m watching or intending to watch in the near future slips off the service) what is the math in that?
Copying something does not remove the thing from the original owner, hence these are different acts.
Referring to such things as theft or stealing is lazy and incorrect, regardless of relative severity.
The fact you use the term “stealing” in your justification of the act being “stealing” kinda points to your own circular reasoning there, rather than a good defence.
We can agree it’s wrong without polluting the semantic space. Otherwise we may as well just call everything “murder” or “terrorism” and be done with it.
> The key part is depriving the original owner of the use of the item.
I know that’s been a tribal shibboleth of piracy since the 2000s, and I’m sympathetic to the moral argument to this view… but it’s just factually untrue (both in terminology AND in law)
It’s not though, in law, as they are different crimes. And that’s where copyright infringement even is a crime rather than a civil matter as it is in many places.
Whether you think piracy is right or wrong, there is a crucial difference between traditionally understood stealing or theft, in that the original owner no longer has the thing. With copyright infringement that’s not the case.