intellectually piracy is still not stealing
it's causing hypothetical financial damages
I say hypothetical because they are actually only there if you would have bought the game/sub/etc. if you couldn't have pirated the game. But in many case that's not the case (and in many others it is). Most commonly the actual damages are much smaller then whatever companies get away with claiming they are. And there had been studies showing that for some games piracy actually increased their sells long term. Through definitely not all games.
Anyway causing financial damages != stealing, mainly on a per-case basis financial damages from actual stealing tend to hugely outweighs the ones from piracy.
it's a huge difference when you consider how it will affect how people see and what people think is okay to prevent privacy (people including law makers and judges)
Software and digital content piracy does not deprive any other owner of anything else, this is isn't stealing in the legal sense. It may be financial harm or copyright abuse but those are both separate crimes from theft.
Piracy isn't legal, but it isn't theft either.
If consumers framed subscription services as literally rape that wouldn't be a side issue either.
I'm not saying that every piece of data should be free to sell and distribute always, but the current state of intellectual property and DRM is nothing sort of a disgrace.
But a major question is what is acceptable (practically, legally) to prevent piracy.
And by framing piracy as stealing it is much easier to convince law maker and the general public that very much not reasonable solutions are acceptable.
So that it's not technically stealing is really important for proper law making.
Piracy is a clear and self-evident moral good irrespective of how close or not it is to stealing. Justifying piracy based on wordplay opens you up to attack by people and organizations that like to destroy what is good through manipulative wordplay.
There is this thing called civil disobedience as a tool to keep fairness in check. This might a justification of piracy.
A corporation predicted huge increase in profits the next year, but didn't achieve it, so they blamed piracy for it and pressured governments to stricken punishment for piracy. A corporation felt entitled to money they didn't get and felt as a result vicitimised.
Is it legal to sneak into the movie after buying the ticket and being refused admittance without cause? Probably not.
Would a jury convict? Probably not.
If you consider that the state shouldn’t intervene, or shouldn’t intervene in this way, then it’s not immoral. For example, the state could say “DRM and if anyone can break the DRM, they’re free to use the game” or it could say “Any software becomes open-source after 20 years” (which, at least, would have the benefit of being useful). Same goes for songs or other artistic work, it will be much less monetizable but maybe it will restore the “art” part in “art”.