In reality it's like stealing a car while loudly exclaiming that you did not intend to steal anything and strongly believed it was free to use for anyone.
To this day I cannot believe some fraction of the human population saw the
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR PSA and took it as unassailable gospel. Yes, obviously I would steal a car if my doing so would leave an immaculate duplicate in its place; it would almost be immoral
not to do so, see for example objectively evil data hoarding like the case of "game collectors" destroying or locking up source code or last extant copies of games. This is true of basically anything, food, water, whatever. If I'm the last person on earth with water and you can make an ocean of it for free but only if I let you, am I wrong to deny you or are you wrong to do it anyway? The theft analogy is a terrible analogy.
If something is released online, and not behind a paywall or DRM (and possibly even then if it was legally purchased without a limited license), then it's public domain. You have inflicted the violence of whatever you want to show me onto me, what I do with the bits I have been forced to download is my choice. All pretending otherwise has done was give Youtube the claws to butcher Limewire and the RCA simultaneously as the #1 music "theft" platform, while pocketing as much of the revenue as they can, instead of rewarding it to any "artists" or "authors" directly. Copyright simply does not work in a digital context, stop pretending it does.
The law is murky in so far as the totally opposed legal viewpoints regarding possession and receipt of electronic materials, and that of copyright and intellectual property, have not been forced to clash due to the cowardice of judges worldwide who literally refuse to cite them in tandem... If pushed into such a situation, I doubt intellectual property would prevail.