Do you mean stealing, as in shoplifting game boxes from a store?

Then I'd guess you're right.

But I think you're referring to unauthorized copies, i.e. copyright law infringement.

My take is that the use of the term piracy was a successful marketing feat of the pro-IP lobbies. In order to associate copyright law infringement with the negative views on the violence and cruelty depicted in popular culture and commonly associated with robbery committed at sea.

Such associations have the hidden intent to liken copyright law infringement with the infringement of natural law rights (the right to life and to property - although the right to property can be debated).

The effect is that copyright and patent law are increasingly deemed as natural law: The authors and inventors must be rewarded. We owe them so. They deserve protection.

In fact, some little research will show that copyright and patent law were created not so long ago as incentives (even called privileges in some countries). Before these laws were created, the natural law was to copy what was useful with the means available at the time.

I'd say that continuing to use the term piracy, instead of copyright or patent law infringement, is to inadvertently cave in to marketing tactics of industries that have established and maintained themselves mainly because of the human created systems of state granted privileges (and not necessarily the value of their work).

Not to say that I'm against the granting of temporary and limited privileges, when they are actual incentives to the production of something useful, that wouldn't be produced otherwise.

But I'm surely against the granting of disproportionate privileges without regards to their actual need as incentives and the disincentives they weigh, curbing innovation in many ways.

The main trouble the pro-IP industries now face is that the means to copy are nowadays much more generally accessible. The "natural law" or "natural ways" of copying what is useful or pleasing is increasingly more accessible. With such, the industries that maintain themselves mainly because of the privileges they were granted, instead of the value they create, are being challenged. It's the case of old business models.

It really is time to think of exchanging patent and copyright law for more effective and proportionate incentives: such as temporary tax exemptions instead of monopolies and artificial controls on the common and natural ability to copy, modify and distribute.

Cheers,