Sorry about that, you know how the human mind loses track of time sometimes. Now that you've reminded me it's the '10s, I'll try a completely different argument: Next time you buy a pizza, if you don't give me half of it, I'm going to call that theft. No, wait, actually, I think I'll just go all-in and call it murder.

I can do that, right? Since in 2010, apparently nobody cares that the definition of theft involves depriving someone of property, just as the definition of murder involves depriving someone of life.

Non-sarcastically, as "sad" as my reusing old arguments may be, attempting to guilt-trip or prejudice by disregarding definitions to call something by a scarier name is even sadder. If your arguments as to why information should receive property-like legal protection, or why that legal protection should be morally binding, cannot stand on their own merit when using accurate terms like "copyright infringement", then you should find some new arguments.

Wow. The ignorance is staggering. Do you really not know that the publishing lobby's efforts to secure legislation stripping people of their natural right to copy their own property dates to the early days of the printing press, not the "electric box"? The only thing changing in the '80s was the barrier to entry -- and by then, the legal framework of copyright (and the assumption of its moral validity) had already been established with little scrutiny, because at the time it did not really affect most people,

You mean the only way to make money from previous works, without having to develop new ones? Sure -- although even that ultimately fails, as people will copy it, remove the ads, and reupload it.

Maybe, if you'd even read what I said, you'd realize that I was suggesting a completely different class of business models, where one doesn't speculatively invest in developing a work, then seek ways to force people to pay it back, either directly, or by bartering their eyeballs on a screen, which you in turn sell to advertisers. Business models where you directly sell the service of producing content , and get out of the distribution market altogether.

Well, here, you're arguing to the wrong guy.

When I spoke of someone who didn't have money, so they couldn't have bought it, so there was no real or potential lost sale, I was using that as an example to show why that argument is ridiculously broken -- in fact I consider it ridiculous precisely because, if accepted, it leads to the conclusion that whether piracy is "theft" or not depends on whether the person could have (and, even more awkwardly, would have) purchased it legitimately, which is obvious nonsense.

I completely share your disgust with arguments that the morality of theft, copyright infringement, or anything else should depend on the depth of the perpetrator's pockets.