What does matter is marginal cost of providing service. In this case it is ZERO. So no, it is not stealing. Nowhere close.
Say that I have an idea for a copyrightable work. It is going to take me one year to create it, working 8 hours a day. To make it simple, put a price of my time at $100,000 for that one year.
Now I could find someone to give me $100,000 as a fee for creating that work (assume that I have no other desire to make it for myself, so I would only do that if someone pays me). But now the problem is, to almost any potential customer, that work is only worth $10.00. So it doesn't get created.
Or, I could find 10,000 people to each give me $10.00 in advance to make it. Now this is in the realm of possibility. Kind of like the Kickstarter model. But now everyone either has to pay in advance, then wait a year to receive it. Or sign a legally binding contract that they owe $10.00 each once the product is delivered. This all adds friction to the system.
Can we invent some technique to remove this friction? How about, I'm willing to take a chance on the popularity of my work, and build it in advance. I really don't know how many people are interested -- it might be 10,000; maybe 5,000 or possibly 50,000. So with copyright, I can safely take that chance -- over time, if I create enough works, some may lose (not be popular enough), some may win big (and I make much more than the time I put into it). As long as it averages out, society in general is better off (assuming you think it is worthwhile for the works to exist to begin with -- I'm guessing this is true, otherwise you wouldn't be interested in obtaining it to begin with).
Now, does anyone have any other models (I mentioned the Kickstarter model already) that can equally reduce the above-mentioned friction? That is, allowing a creator to take a chance on making something in advance, and then on average extracting the fair fee for everyone who wants that service?
Patreon?
And I don't really care about mega-production Hollywood. It can burn today if I care.
Copying someones work for your own consumption? Nothing is wrong with such behavior. Nor with non-commercial sharing. Not until you have disposable income. Then consuming and not chipping in is meh.
Legal positivism is has it's stronger sides, but this is victimless crime.
And what about your views? :)
I don't think whether or not you have disposable income is an important discriminant. Who decides whether you have enough disposable income to justify paying for content?
I think there are a lot of issues with laws regarding intellectual property and content. Even though I disagree with them, I don't think flouting those laws is right or some sort of civil disobedience.
Same with copying someone's work for personal use or non-commercial sharing. The existing framework is the one we've got, and there are currently ways authors or content providers can make it clear that they are willing to do so: Creative Commons licenses are one example. Likewise with other patronage models, such as Patreon. In other cases, you're benefitting from their work without them receiving compensation. There's no agreed upon transaction. Whatever term is used to describe it, I don't think it's right.
Concerning 2): many people I know who pirate, say, a particular show, would simply not watch if piracy was not available. On the other hand, once this show becomes easily available and accessible on something like Netflix, these same people happily pay for the content. It seems inaccurate and dishonest to call them 'thieves' by the conventional definition.
tl;dr: I wouldn't defend piracy in most cases (you could just not watch the show), but I think calling someone doing this a 'thief' is a morally worse because of what that words means to most of us.