I fail to see how it’s not just nitpicking. Yes, pirates only copy something and the original owner still gets to keep it.
The end result however is that someone gets something for free that they otherwise would have to pay for, similar to sneaking on a train or into a concert. In these cases, I don’t think many people would argue that what you’re doing isn’t wrong, or meaningfully different from theft; safe for lawyers of course, but I fail to see why the quibbling is relevant for normal people.
It's, if anything, more important for normal people: I think there's a very important moral difference between something that actively harms another person and not paying for something that benefits you. The latter, for example, should be much more acceptable for someone who lacks the means to pay to do. It's also much more important, (i.e. we should spend more resources), to prevent theft. Preventing piracy and your other examples is only important to the extent that it keeps the endeavor viable, or at least the effort in the prevention is worth the increase in payments. Coalescing this all into one thing is behind a lot of what I consider to be very harmful rhetoric and politics.
The end result however is that someone gets something for free that they otherwise would have to pay for, similar to sneaking on a train or into a concert. In these cases, I don’t think many people would argue that what you’re doing isn’t wrong, or meaningfully different from theft; safe for lawyers of course, but I fail to see why the quibbling is relevant for normal people.