"On the other hand, they could easily provide paid service internationally but choose not to."

I doubt it's easy, but they've been working on it for a while now and it should be available fairly soon.

I agree that it may not be fair to characterise the content as 'stolen'; I chose to use that term out of laziness. However, it's definitely not fair to consume the content without paying, either. It increases the financial burden on the UK license payer. Many of the BBC's shows are available to a US audience - you just have to buy them on Amazon, or stream them on Netflix.