Stealing money from your account is theft, it’s not still there afterwards.
The concept I think you might’ve been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.
It’s also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.
It is common for artists to not own their own work. Taylor Swift bought back her own work, Michael Jackson bought Paul McCartney’s work from the record company (which annoyed Paul because he would have done it otherwise).
This is a horseshit analogy.
Stealing money from your account is theft, it’s not still there afterwards.
The concept I think you might’ve been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.
It’s also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.
The artist has ownership rights to all copies, not just the original; it’s literally in the word “copyright”.
It is common for artists to not own their own work. Taylor Swift bought back her own work, Michael Jackson bought Paul McCartney’s work from the record company (which annoyed Paul because he would have done it otherwise).