It is though, because no one is a victim in that transaction. Nobody lost anything and nobody suffered any loss of potential profit because they actively refused said profit.

I'm not fussed about how it sounds (or whether it appeals to your sense of justice), but it's a case of using the correct words. Stealing/theft involves intentionally depriving someone of the object and that's clearly not what happens when someone makes a copy.

Personally, I am not a fan of "intellectual property" laws such as copyrights and patents as their original intention doesn't seem relevant anymore and instead they've become a tool of corporations to increase their profits (often at the expense of the creative people that actually produce the works). Copyright only works properly when the creative works get released into the public domain and that is not going to happen with NOLF (and a lot of computer games) and so the public are being denied their side of the copyright deal.

"It's not copyright infringement if it's never going to be released into the public domain in a usable form" would be a better statement of my thinking.