This line of thinking can only be followed by selfish motivated reasoning.

Suppose I bake 100 brownies and try to sell them one morning. I sell some and as I'm packing up my booth you take one and eat it. You argue, "I was never going to pay for a brownie, I didn't want it that badly, and anyway you can't sell them tomorrow because they will be stale."

There is something deeply wrong and immoral about this way of thinking. The idea that you alone get to value someone else's work output to be zero and then take that output and claim it has no value, and that the taking causes no harm.

It is theft. But you don't want to be called a thief. So you play semantic games.

If I take your brownie that's a brownie you can no longer sell or eat, this isn't the case when you copy software. If they stole a brownie you threw in the trash would you still call them a thief?

But you didn't copy the music and then delete it. You enjoyed it. There was a gain on one side and nothing exchanged for that gain. The lack of reciprocity is the root issue.

Enjoyment was never part of the transaction anyway. I can't get a refund from a movie because I didn't like it.

But you're just quibbling over word choice instead of actually engaging with the core of the moral argument I've made.

Either you can't see the moral argument, which leads me to believe you really are unable to see that piracy is theft. Or you simply don't want to see it and then I fall back to think this is motivated ignorance.

Your whole argument is quibling over word choice, wanting to call pirates thieves even though there are distinct differences.

And yet you still won't engage with the core argument about the immorality of violating the principle of reciprocity. I get it. You think I'm wrong. You have to either make an attempt to change my mind or simply stop replying.

If you don't care to engage with the idea then I don't care to continue.

Yes I think it's wrong, I'll agree with you on that. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as stealing though.