The concept you bring up applied before the digital world took off as well.

For those of us who were around when the whole "YoU WoULdN't StEaL a CaR!" argument against piracy was being made, it was a false equivalency when it came to ownership back then too.

Copying a song off the radio onto a tape cassette was not the same as breaking into a car, hot-wiring it, and driving off in it. Someone copying a song from the radio onto a cassette was not preventing others from listening to it.

Yes. This is not about theft. It's about intellectual property rights and royalties via cloning a non-physical creation. They just masquerade it as theft because it helps their argument. It's disingenuous of them.