[anonymous_sorry]

I agree with your plea for moral consistency, but it should be noted that describing the unlicensed copying of data as "stealing" and "thievery" is a metaphor. If I steal a car, I have denied someone else use of the car. If I pirate a film that I would never have paid for, I have enriched myself at no cost to anyone else. If I pirate a film which I would otherwise have paid for, then yes, I have impoverished the studio.

Sorry to be picky, but I think it's important to remember that intellectual "property" rights are a legal construct that societies create in an attempt to make society as a whole richer by encouraging creativity. I worry that overuse of metaphors like "property" and "theft" elevate IP to a god-given commandment (thou shalt not steal), obscuring the fact that we should design our intellectually property rights to ensure they're doing what we want. Enriching creators is not an end goal in itself.

[youreincorrect]

I agree in a sense, it's a grey area, given the only crime is a person is literally copying a work and enjoying/using it. So my biggest issue with IP laws are that the potential punishments for copying do not come close to matching the crime, as they're quite draconian.

And I find it hard to believe that the spirit of these laws was intended to target end-users who copy something to watch for their own personal enjoyment, rather than to target people who copied works in an attempt to earn a profit personally. The only way the punishment fits the crime is in the latter situation, IMO. Yet I assume the laws are applied more frequently to the former situation.