Listen: Theft is a legal term, just like copyright. When someone steals something (theft), the owner of that thing doesn't have it anymore. When someone violates copyright the owner still has the thing and can continue to make as many copies of it as they like.

In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s the RIAA and MPAA had vast marketing campaigns trying to re-brand copyright violation as "theft". Copyright existed for centuries before Congress decided to pass The Sound Recording Act of 1971 and the Copyright Act of 1976 which was the first time (ever) that copying something without permission could be prosecuted as a criminal offense (instead of civil).

The "Piracy is Theft" thing is literally from one of their advertising campaigns! They invented it and it's nothing but pro-corporate propaganda. Do not think for one second that anyone stands to lose significant amounts of money from piracy other than corporations and even that's debatable.

Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. -Gabe Newell, founder of Valve Software (Steam)

Individuals have been copying stuff since forever and nobody cared until some bean counter invented the disproven concept of "one pirated thing == one lost sale." We all know that's not how it works! That entire concept is another form of "Hollywood Accounting":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

So no. Fuck no. It's not "splitting hairs."

So the training of their AI on content without permission was theft? Last year, they argued the opposite.

Jokes aside, copyright infringement or license violatipns aren't theft.

Man, you're just everywhere trying to lick the polish off the fash boots, aren't you? Are you getting paid for this? It's difficult to believe someone would have such alarmingly stupid personal opinions and still manage to figure out how to use the internet