I'm not the parent you were referring to either, but my view is that 1) yes, shamelessly 'pirating' is at the very least a moral gray area, and in my opinion on

I'm not the parent you were referring to either, but my view is that 1) yes, shamelessly 'pirating' is at the very least a moral gray area, and in my opinion on darker side of this area, and 2) calling it stealing is a gross oversimplification. Concerning 2): many people I know who pirate, say, a particular show, would simply not watch if piracy was not available. On the other hand, once this show becomes easily available and accessible on something like Netflix, these same people happily pay for the content. It seems inaccurate and dishonest to call them 'thieves' by the conventional definition. tl;dr: I wouldn't defend piracy in most cases (you could just not watch the show), but I think calling someone doing this a 'thief' is a morally worse because of what that words means to most of us.