I seriously don't understand why this point keeps getting repeated. It is just semantics!

Yes, we all know copying a digital show isn't the same exact thing as stealing your car. However, you are still taking something of value! Let's say you snuck into my band's concert venue and didn't buy a ticket. Yeah you didn't physically take anything from me, but you are having access to something you shouldn't without paying.

No, I am not taking anything of value. You still have all the things of value you had before. The difference between a rivalrous good and a non-rivalrous good is not semantics.

The mental gymnastics to justify piracy as anything other than theft is always interesting to watch.

So is the substitution of moral smugness for complex thought.

Call it stealing it or not, non rivalrous or whatever, the point is that the movie owners have intellectual property rights to their movies and can decide how it is distributed.

If you think that's a dumb deal then you don't have to take it. Pirating it is simply wrong.

piracy is receiving the service value of entertainment without providing the requested fee.

Another word for it is stealing.

For receiving the service value of entertainment of reading this comment, I request a fee of $1,000.

Is my request reasonable? Do you feel inclined to pay me? Do I incur $1000 of damages if you choose not to?

Theft is not defined by the receiving, it is defined by the taking. The moral ill is not you being enriched, it is the person who had it rightfully, being deprived of it.

"Let's say you snuck into my band's concert venue and didn't buy a ticket. Yeah you didn't physically take anything from me, but you are having access to something you shouldn't without paying."

And this is again a physical situation, where one more person takes up limited space, reducing something.

Copying does not reduce anything.

It also does not contribute anything, true, so I am not saying it is always ethical to do so.

But when a poor person in bangladesh or bolivia living under very different economic realities, where 10$ means a LOT and who could never afford to pay for western realities anyway, streams some hollywood movie from a warez site - than I see zero damage. And guess what, they all do. So do poor teenagers and students in the west and they usually start paying, once they can afford it.

Judging them all as "thefts" from a position of being born into wealth, is maybe not very ethical either. So to repeat it again, stealing implies taking something away. Which is not the case here.