It is unlawful, that is true, but apart from that I see very little similarity...^^
I'm not claiming that pirating ebooks is OK, according to the law, morals and so on it most definitely is not.
However, the meaning of the word "theft" and "piracy" has to be stretched quite a bit to fit the bill here.
I'll try one more time:
If I go to a shop and steal a CD then it is theft, the CD is gone and the publisher and artist lose money.
If I go to a shop, unpack my Laptop, copy a CD and then don't buy it that is also a type of Theft. The CD is still there, publisher and artist don't lose any money but don't earn any either. It's a (theoretical) loss of profit since I could have bought the CD.
If I go to a shop and ask for a CD and the shopowner tells me he won't sell it to me, I then go home and download the content of the CD and keep it on my computer or burn it onto a CD I would not call it theft.
The reasons are as follows:
1.) The item is not gone, so no physical theft took place. Nobody loses money.
2.) The item was not for sale anyway so nobody loses profit.
If nobody loses anything, how can it be Theft? In a regulary Software/Music/ebook/DVD/Whatever piracy situation there is at least a theoretical loss of profit, because the pirate could have possibly been tempted to buy the item he downloaded for free had it not been available as pirated copy.
In the case of geo-restricted material however, it would seem that it is more a case of unauthorized import than of theft...
Maybe I'm completely mistaken, I'm pretty sure a lawyer would see things differently, but sound logic seems to imply that in this case there can be no theft since there is no contraband and nobody loses anything...
