If I steal a Ferrari from you, you no longer have the use of it. That doesn't apply to downloading, say, music.
The thing that annoys me about "anti-piracy" is that it actually annoys the honest consumer. Say I buy a DVD movie. I have to sit through screen-fulls of stuff, in various languages, which I cannot fast-forward past, telling me not to steal it. But I haven't stolen it. Then there is the "you wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a car, so DON'T STEAL THIS VIDEO!" promo they make you watch. Again, I haven't stolen it.
Then they region-encode it, so I can't watch a video I buy legally from Amazon, because it isn't available here in Australia, in Australia.
Hey, but guess what? If you get a pirated copy, you don't get insulted. You don't get the "you wouldn't steal a car ..." promo. They aren't region encoded. So it's like the video industry has adopted the position: annoy and insult the customer.
Let me put it like this ... if you went into a shop, and a guard stopped you at the door and started SHOUTING at you: "hey mate! don't you dare steal from this store!" and then repeated the message in French, German and Spanish, before even letting you inside, you'd walk away wouldn't you? Insulting customers is not good business.