Speaking of CDs: the music industry (maybe RIAA was involved, I don’t know) seems to have figured out digital content delivery. I’ve got exactly one subscription for music: Spotify. I can get all the music I want to listen to with this, more than I could ever get when I used BitTorrent (public trackers were sometimes limited, and seeding on ADSL was hard). If they were to raise the price, I’d still use it. There are issues with how artists are remunerated for their work, but the problem of distribution is basically solved. Why can’t the film industry do this?
You deprived someone of the revenue generated by their property. Still theft.
If you squat in an apartment, is that theft?
Revenue from a purchase that I'm not going to make is non-existent. It can't be lost or gained.
You have not; that revenue never existed.
Squatting is sometimes legal (in the UK at least) and squatters can end up owning the property if they live there long enough.
It's not theft.
Even if he was authorized to make the copy he would have still needed to pay to use the copy.
He's not authorized to make or use the copy.
It's not a useless distinction though. One can argue that stealing is bad because when I steal your car, you don't have access to your car anymore. If I were to copy your car I wouldn't harm you.
That doesn't mean it's okay to illegally copy something, but comparing it to theft is unhelpful at best and misleading at worst.
Let's reword that as:
"I couldn't get this thing for the price I wanted so I stole a copy"
Seriously? Imagine going into a box store and doing that. You would face a high probability of being arrested for theft.