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More like toymakers letting children share with each other.

You have some very entitled opinions

Nah, the entitled opinions are coming from the “pay me, but you can’t own media” folks.

if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media

If everyone thought like me, people could buy digital media in convenient formats at reasonable prices, and buying media would probably still be a lot more popular. My Bandcamp library is in the tens of thousands and growing. I support digital purchasing more than most, when it’s done well.

but it’s pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing

As the whole crux of the thread makes clear, no taking is involved. You might want to go re-read the OP again, speaking of asinine.

hence why piracy is considered theft because there is a debt owed for the pirated media

This is objectively false in any meaningful way. It’s certainly not considered theft (at least in the US), and there’s absolutely no debt owed for pirated media (unless you count seeding it forward).

I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.

It’s less an analogy than the literal legal definition of theft.

Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.

This analogy is crap. When they took your paycheck, that was theft. Even if temporarily, you didn’t have the check. If they cash the fraudulent check, they’re not copying the money; it’s coming out of your account. That’s also theft. Both cases, the original is being removed, whether it be the physical check or the money from your account. The only reason there might be a “copy” in your analogy is some sort of fraud protection by the bank, at which point it’s the bank’s money getting stolen. Still theft though.

This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.

It does though, since no harm is being done.

The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied. The intent of that data is to be copied for profit. Now that the data has been copied against the creator/owners will, they do not receive the profit from that copy.

They also don’t receive profit from not copying, unless there’s a purchase made. By your logic, watching something on Netflix or listening to it on the radio is actively harmful to creators, which I think most people can admit is absurd.

but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data.

You made this assertion, but don’t really back it up. If you were correct here, being able to copy cassette tapes or burn cds would have killed the music industry decades ago. Piracy is the original grassroots promotional method.

At the very least it gives people an option not to pay for the data, which is not what the creator wanted in creating it.

That’s a separate argument and doesn’t relate at all to the supposed financial harm.

They are entitled to fair compensation to their work.

That’s a loaded assertion. If I sing a song right now, what am I entitled to be paid for it? And you’re ignoring that most of the “work” of being a musician (in most genres at least) is playing live performances, the experience of which cannot be pirated.

It is true that pirating is not directly theft, but it does definitely take away from the creator’s/distributor’s profit.

I don’t think it’s definite at all. Most of what musicians make these days is from merch and ticket sales, which piracy contributes to by bringing in new fans.

Total non-issue. I’d be surprised if anyone can provide a single credible instance of this biting someone in the ass.