You're suggesting that it isn't stealing because the thief perhaps would not have bought it anyway?
_worst_logic_ever_
I believe I said "Piracy is its own can of worms and should be dealt with as such". Lumping it in with theft and suggesting the same punishment as theft is not the proper way to approach it at all.
Growing up I had little interest in music, and didn't gain an interest until a friend allowed me to copy all his music. From there I developed my own interests through torrents while in university. Now that I have a real job, all my new music is purchased. What did the music industry lose from me being a pirate? Nothing. What did they gain? A customer.
I'm not alone either. An Industry Canada (I'm Canadian eh?) study found that music pirates were also the largest purchasers of music. Of course there are those who refuse to pay on principle, but I'm not advocating that piracy is morally correct anyway, just that it needs to be handled differently.
I could be also considered a pirate for downloaded fansubs of anime as they are aired in Japan, but the shows aren't available here and I do purchase what I like when it comes available here (although ridiculous costs temper my enthusiasm).
The way I see it, piracy is a double edged sword. It can be both detrimental to profits and expand a customer base. If you focus solely on the negative aspects you can't take advantage of the positive aspects, or even add them to your business model. Piracy has proven the case for torrents as a distribution method, why don't more companies make use of them (with a private tracker if needed) to cut down on server costs? If so many more people will consume your content for free, why not try and take advantage of that? The most obvious option would be advertising (hulu is a start, of course I don't have access being in Canada).
As long as people shun piracy and write it off as common theft, it will continue to persist and many opportunities will be missed. Apple has learned one of the most basic reasons behind piracy. Convenience. If you make your content easier to find and acquire than free pirated content, there are many that will pay for it. Why else is iTunes successful? Or the App store? The piracy numbers aside, people are paying for things that they never would have before the iPhone. It's so simple: go to the app store, click buy and enter your password. Done and done. Making it harder to obtain paid content, crippling it with DRM, etc, etc in many ways encourages piracy. But many companies do that because they view piracy as theft.
Piracy is its own can of worms... and you can only effectively deal with it if you look at exactly what it is and why it happens. Thinking of it as theft doesn't allow you to do that.
/end rant
