People also say that someone stole their heart, but it does not mean that they have a gaping hole in their chest. Casual use of a language for narrative purposes is one thing, speaking about actual criminal activity another.

To be clear, I make some money on my IP (being a self-published author who sells his books) and I encountered people pirating scanned copies of my work. I do not mind on this scale, but I am aware that if someone just started publishing my books commercially and I had no copyright to protect me, I would be in trouble.

But it still wouldn't be theft, rather a foul kind of "competition". My physical books wouldn't disappear from my (rented) garage and readers who like me would still hopefully buy them directly on my e-shop.

The most sold book in the world, by a large margin, for a long long time, is The Bible. If genetic historians and biblical scholars succeed, perhaps someday the unknown decedents of the unknown authors and other known valid holders of IP rights, such as the decedents of Moses and brothers, sisters and cousins of Jesus, could one day be fairly compensated. But it would end up being everyone alive, so we should do that, fairly compensate all the IP holders for the unpaid use of all that IP, including all the movies and TV shows, and including all interest accrued across the centuries, and literally everyone will get rich off the proceeds of past, current and future Bible sales. Crazy idea, but it just might work.

Thank you.

And it's strange, in that you could become relevant and have your audience expanded by the infringers hand.

Question there is how to benefit from that...

Then you'd have to sue your business competitors if they manage to capture a part of your market. After all you've been deprived by them of the benefit of getting money from that part of the market.

This is basically how it works

This meaning of stealing relies on creating artificial scarcity. It doesn't seem that intuitive.