It cannot be theft. By copying a cd for a friend I used my own legitimate copy of the CD, a CD-R rightfully acquired from Staples and my computer's CD-R/RW drive to duplicate the record label's product. My materials, unless you want to argue that property rights don't exist when corporations say that they don't.
So you are completely wrong, it cannot be theft. In order to be theft I would have had to actually take a physical unit that they manufactured without their permission. Using your logic, if I build a case that is an exact duplicate of a Dell Optiplex case and build a system that uses the identical parts as a Dell Optiplex system I have just stolen from Dell because I functionally recreated a Dell Optiplex system even though Dell did not spend any money on that. So if I give it to a friend, I have just committed "piracy."
These bozos have no right to complain anyway. They "steal" ideas from the public domain all of the time, copyright them then try to prosecute people for copying "their property" (why don't you justify how the company still owns even the physical copy after they sell it to you). Disney rapes and pillages the public domain all of the time or they do it to other production companies. Look at O Brother Where Art Thou, a modern remake of Homer's Odyssey. Oh well, guess we had to break the cycle somewhere, afterall we can't have a bunch of commies freeloading off of the work of others anymore. This issue separates the capitalists from the market socialists. The capitalists don't care about a few pissant industries like the entertainment industries. If they wallow in their own government protection-induced laziness and get f@#$ed by P2P, etc then that's their problem. All of these stupid little market socialists going around talking about how we need to "protect industry" are getting dull. Not on my dime, nor on my liberty will you protect them from the market.