I find this disgusting. You’re trying to justify theft, which isn’t what the article is about.
If I steal your car, you no longer have a car and are deprived of the benefits. If I pirate your book, you are deprived of the vague possibility of some income from me -- there's no guarantee I would have bought your book if I could afford it, and there was no possibility of piracy. You still have the book though.
Then there's the whole area of pirating things you already bought because of the offensive forced trailers and warnings on DVDs, or rampant copy protection that causes machine issues, or finding an ancient original CD, or simply because music piracy is as quick but less hassle than ripping a CD and adding artwork.
I want to buy a book in my mother language (Italian), but I live in Canada. The rights for the italian translation have not been purchased by anyone in Canada, so I cannot buy it here (the book is sold only in English). To buy the italian book though, I need to buy it from. Italy, using an italian address for billing. This is illegal, since I live in Canada and have no italian address. Lying on an official document can be punished with 2 years incarceration. So my only option to buy such book is traveling to Italy and buy it in a physical shop. Great for pollution, and sets the book price at something insane.
Alternatively, I can pirate it.
The copywriters are going to do that they do. I'm going to do what I do with no guilt felt
Debatable. There are plenty of situations where I feel I'm morally justified in pirating things. When my values tell me that companies shouldn't be able to profit off of something they made 20-30 years ago, then I have no moral qualms in downloading a ROM of a game for a console that isn't made anymore. Regardless of whether "remasters" or "ports" exist or not. Because in an ideal world, that wouldn't result in an eternal extension in copyright.
These days, I pay a pittance for streaming (lazy), but buy albums directly from artists. (As in I hand over cash at concert venues)
Perhaps it should be illegal for artists to sign away their own copyright/distribution rights. Exclusive licensing would still be fine.
Then, artists could sell albums direct to the public. The distributors would have to keep their cut low enough to account for competition from artists undercutting them via direct sales.
How many laws are you going to break today?