The laws were brought in, because people were abusing the ability to copy digital media and profiting off of it. Essentially making money off of someone else's hard work. That is what the laws are there to stop.
The unfortunate side effect is that even legitimate copying of digital media is being restricted, and while that is a bummer, it also isn't the end of the world.
But in some ways, you are just trying to shift the entitlement from the person wanting a free ride back onto yourself, suggesting that you should be able to do whatever you want with someone else's work (which it still is, even though you have a copy of it). That simply isn't true.
It is no different to Intellectual Property. If you started photo copying and distributing Pokemon cards, you and others would be benefiting from someone elses work, without them getting compensation for it. Even if you're not profiting monetarily, those other people are certainly profiting in some way.
I am in no way a copyright evangelist, but the argument that just because you didn't deprive them of it means that it is okay just doesn't reside in reality. I agree that in most cases, torrenting or streaming something for free when you should be paying is not a big deal. But to pretend it's ethical is a stretch.
The big elephant in the room is that distribution and maybe even production do not require publishers anymore...and so instead of changing to adapt to the market they are out cracking down on supposed pirates.
It takes a lot of ignorance of the business model of publishers to defend their status as on par with artists.
You're paying for the creator's time and labor. Taking the product of that time and labor without compensation is theft.
Loss of income does not equal theft.
Whether you have then been wronged or not is another discussion with valid arguments on both sides.
Why not call it copyright infringement if you want a more neutral term?
And this is true for both digital content or something as intangible as an identity.
So I am not really convinced by the simple argument that since the original still exists untouched, everything is fine. Yes, this is surely convenient and better for the original author/owner/creator, but not enough to say nothing harmful happened.
This is also a inconvenient word, though for different reasons.
More to the point though, labelling the act of downloading the latest film as theft is not conductive to a discussion about the moral justification of piracy, because you are using loaded language to condemn it even before presenting an argument. That is, there appears to be no strong consensus that piracy falls under what is commonly referred to as theft.
(I am under the impression that the term digital piracy did stick regardless of one's position in that debate.)
There is clear precedent that you are not.
In this case, HBO is a business trying to make profit. It spends enormous amounts of money producing shows. Giving away a copy of their product for free arguably reduces their ability to stay solvent. Thus, theft.
Spending an enormous amount of money does not entitle anyone to a profit, just ask Webvan.
If you illegally take away income from a business, it can be classified as theft. If you do something else illegal that doesn't take away income, it would be hard to classify it as theft. Apologies if I was cryptic.
When you create that original you estimate that you have to sell X-number of copies to get back your money that you put into creating the original. If you want to watch/listen to/read that work you at least partially agree with the author that it's worth something. It may be in your opinion worth less then the price, but it's not up to you to set that price, as you have no idea how much work and resources did the author put into creating it. You have only one right - agree or disagree with the author and either pay him for this work or look for something else that was priced in your range.