(To be clear: this is not a comment on Google's broken platform or the article, that's just awful. It's a response to the question "who gives a fuck?" regarding torrenting generally.)
> would Jesus' other teachings...not have left you considering digital piracy to be immoral?
Romans 13 calls Christians to be subject to authorities, that would be most Christians' given reason. It's one of my reasons, but it was not the reason that first convinced my heart.
> I can't understand how that particular bible verse could be a genuine influence on deciding whether or not illegally downloading copyrighted material is acceptable, at all. Can you explain what logic led from reading that text to deciding it meant you shouldn't pirate things?
Enemies of Jesus asked (paraphrasing) "Is it righteous to pay Caesar's tax, or not?". They were trying to trap him into saying something either illegal in the eyes of the Romans, or unrighteous in the eyes of the Jews. This is why Jesus says to bring him a coin, and asked "Who's head is on this coin?", and then says therefore "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God the things that are God's". This is the answer to the question of what is right with conflicting authorities, because on reflection it is not controversial that God's ownership should take precedence, but that otherwise in Caesar's land and with Caesar's money you must play by Caesar's rules.
Furthermore, for a free man of those days, this principle would have been a precursor of the social contract: you partake in Caesar's money (or live in his land), then you pay Caesar's tax; the same way that you might argue that people who benefit from society owe a debt to society.
Thinking of it this way, now think about media that is 'owned'. It bears someone's mark. You watch completely freely, you are far more free and flexible to choose what media you consume than what economy you engage with. Nobody in the free world is oppressed into watching movies. I find it now actually principled to defend therefore that the 'owner' of some media (especially the creator) can expect payment in return for a copy of the media. We can certainly debate about reasonable scope of copyrights, but I think copyrights themselves are reasonable to an extent.