They're right though. Theft in most jurisdictions requires dishonest appropriation of a thing, with the intent of permanently depriving the owner of it. Copyi

They're right though. Theft in most jurisdictions requires dishonest appropriation of a thing, with the intent of permanently depriving the owner of it. Copying an object doesn't count as theft because the owner still has the original thing. This is why copyrights have their own laws and aren't included in theft laws. And let's add a further wrinkle: often, copyright violation isn't even a crime. There are things that turn it into a crime (doing it as part of business is the main one), but most people downloading a film from PirateBay are not committing a criminal offence.