That is probably true. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that theft happens, by and large, due to poor access to drugs. If the drug market was more efficient, it is possible a lot of those theft crimes would go away.

Of course, theft and copyright infringement are not directly comparable, being quite different concepts.

Repeat after me: piracy is not theft.

To be precise, "piracy" isn't even piracy. After all, it's not murder, kidnapping, and plunder on the high seas.

Thank you - you're quite right. I should have written, "copying isn't theft".

It shouldn't be a surprise to you that words can have more than one meaning.

This one is by design.

'Piracy' was defined as copyright violation by the copyright holders, not by general usage.

Therefore, we should fight that usage, just to compensate the balance.

I follow but disagree. The world's largest and most successful torrent site calls itself The Pirate Bay. There are political "Pirate Parties" in Canada and Sweden. It may have been a pejorative label initially, but file sharers have "owned" the name and made it their own.

That's exactly how language is defined; by popular usage, not by design.

Unfortunately your attempted reductio ad absurdum doesn't quite get to the absurdum point.