Early on, I had zero compunction about piracy. It took going into business, and having a competitor insult me in a very public fashion, because I had used pirated Windows on a customer's machine - that he had previously dealt with. I was mortified. Piracy is theft. Full stop. When you pirate, you are stealing from someone else. Big bad corporation, or small mom-and-pop shop... They worked to create those bits. If we'…
The media which is pirated is a copy of the original, a new entity separate from the original. The original media is still intact and in place (not stolen).
The argument that not paying money for pirated media is stealing also doesn't hold water. Revenue was never generated from pirated media, which you could technically qualify as unrealized revenue, but it doesn't not qualify as stealing, since the intellectual property owner's possessions haven't been touched.
These are all semantics, but semantics matter. Courts- semantic powerhouses- prosecute on copyright violations, not theft.