> How about you start calling it what it is. It removes cash from the pocket of the creator - it is theft. End of.
I wasn't going to feed you because you are obviously a troll, but here goes.
If a local shop sells DVDs and another shop opens up next door, are they stealing from the original shop for each customer that goes to them instead? Opportunity cost is not the same as actual cost.
If I decide not the buy a DVD from a shop having previously decided that I would and thereby depriving the creator of potential revenue, am I stealing from them?
You really are having a problem differentiating actual cost and potential cost. Nobody has a right to a living and income, it has to be earned.
For your further education, I will explain it using little words: In the beginning, there were physical goods. People traded with each directly, exchanging goods for other goods or money. As commerce became diverse and geographically separated, this "contract of exchange" was maintained by the chain of the passing of a physical good. Because that physical good represented effort on the part of the original creator, the physical good becomes a representation of that original effort. Since breaking the link between that good and the effort is a bad thing, the law of "theft" came into being.
Without a physical good, there is no token, which is why we have strange and unenforceable laws to try to perpetuate the myth of a physical good where there is none. Making my own copy of a film or music, I am performing the effort of manufacture. There is no effort on the part of the original creator so there is no implied contract and there is no loss in the effort/good balance. So there is no theft. It really is that simple. Because you feel sympathy for creators does not change the law or the basis of the concept of "theft" one jot.
Copyright steps in here but even in this case, there is confusion on the part of those that would conflate theft with copyright infringement. Copyright is a sole privilege granted by the law to duplicate to the exclusion of others for a period of time. The copyright holder does not hold "property" and does not own the original work. That would be absurd and is the reason why I wince whenever I see the term Intellectual Property.
You will hear from some that it *is* property because property is merely a manifestation of the rights of things granted by law and just because it isn't physical doesn't make it any different. The problem here is that the creator could indeed "own" the original but they don't own a copy, because it is not the original, just in the same way that a carpenter doesn't own all sofas just because he made one. Someone else who makes a sofa that is identical to the original sofa owns his copy, not the carpenter because this breaks the original tenet that goods and effort are linked. The effort for the sofa copy is not linked with the carpenter.
If you cannot understand the above, then I suggest looking at some books on the subject. It really has been done to death to the extent that I really don't understand why some people just don't 'get it'.