Except that bits and bars of gold are nothing alike which is why you can't be convicted of theft for copying bits. Given that there is literally no relation in law nor morality between theft and copyright infringement even if you believe copyright is effective and desirable tool you could skip a lot of misunderstanding by skipping the part where you use a bad analogy to muddy the water.
Every illegal download reduces the size of the legal purchase marketplace.
Quotes are for referencing literal quotes of the parent post or at least quotes from the parent poster not to put words in others mouths.
Source? Why wouldn't it be possible for every illegal download to increase the size of the legal purchase marketplace? Or to have it effectively stay the same for that matter?
The back catalog stuff (Rolling Stones etc) probably suffers although IMHO the copyright on this stuff should be much shorter anyway.
There's never been a single study proving that illegal downloads harms legal sales.
No. Lots of pen testing stuff exists in the open source realm. A society that allows exploits to be "free speech" is anti-fragile.
On the other hand, the 'stealing' isn't as much the media, as it is the 'consuming' of it. I'm not sure what the correct terminology is, but a lot of people don't think of it as accessing information that isn't public and has a price to access it (be it books, movies, games), but the lawyers (and probably the 'legal owners') do look at it that way. Of course a lot of PR happens during wording and publication and it's much easier to say 'this bad person stole this movie' instead of 'this person gained access and consumed this information while not being allowed to do that'.
Nonsense. In some cases it might be copyright infringement, but only a court can decide and only on a case-by-case basis. How else do we determine if a reproduction is fair use?
"if the owner of the content is having their content used against their will, then you are violating their rights."
That is not how copyrights work. Criticism and parody are allowed whether or not the copyright holder agrees to it, as are various forms of sampling to create new works. Again, whether or not a given act is infringing is something a court has to decide.
If the creator isn’t getting paid for you to watch, then it’s theft. Doesn’t matter if it’s stealing bits, or stealing gold. It’s theft. Rationalize all you want, but if the owner of the content is having their content used against their will, then you are violating their rights.
If the code were an ATM pin code cracker, would that be any different? After all, money is just data right? Just bits stored at the bank.
Let’s also stop conflating “open source” with “right to steal.” Completely different things. If you download a pirate movie, that’s theft — it weakens the concept of open source when it gets lumped into the movement for “free” content.
It’s ironic that a lot of open source people love to talk about licenses — while desiring enforcement of those licenses while at the same time arguing that the license to use someone else’s work is fair to violate.