As a hacker, I love to tinker with stuff. While I love to tinker with tech, I love to tinker with information as well. To put it simply, I'm a hacker and a pirate. Game mods, memes, fan games - are all things I consider strictly beneficial for society, and sadly, they all infringe copyright or at least are discouraged by it. Piracy's effect on society is debatable - it forces the work into an illegal public domain, which can be a good or a bad thing - I'm not as saddened by the fact it infringes copyright, even though I still disagree with the law. For example, I dislike Windows piracy because it still plays for Microsoft's network effect, and some potential Linux users use Windows instead. I absolutely don't consider having pirated IDA wrong - I don't have that kind of disposable income so it had zero effect on Ilfak's pockets, while it gave me a lot of hacking knowledge, saving me time over other (heavily inferior at the time, before Ghidra was a thing) tools I would've potentially used. Perhaps it can be said I was morally in the wrong, but it led to a strictly positive global economic effect - more work done in the same amount of time, with no side effects. I also realize Linux is heavily inferior for some specific use cases, in which case my argument for pirating IDA applies (to a lesser extent because Windows is way cheaper, though since I dislike Microsoft I'd selfishly prefer you to pirate it over buying anyway).
Intellectual Property doesn't mean you own the idea. It means you own some control over that idea's usage. Control is the product when you sell IP. The idea itself belongs to the public [0] - you don't have any power over how other people use the idea in their heads if nothing else. Many creators who rely on IP to earn a living say that their works belong to the public, while not giving them away for free.
At IP laws' dawn, it was rightfully considered dangerous, giving someone control over spread of certain knowledge means the knowledge won't spread as well as it would without copyright. However, the argument was that IP will give rightholders an incentive to create, fund their work, and the limited copyright/patent term will make sure the long-term spread of ideas will stay untouched, and perhaps it was well grounded in reality, soon after the first copyright terms ended in UK there was indeed plenty of competition to make affordable copies of books [1].
Some people consider control over the ideas they thought up their natural right. They say they won't, say, allow the use of said ideas in offensive context. While the effort is commendable and I don't really have an issue with it in this particular case, they are wrong. They don't have said control. 70 years after their death, the control they have will cease, and everyone will be able to use it in an offensive way. With original copyright terms (28 years at most), preventing unwanted usage was most definitely not the intention. Some people think copyright allows them to control what other people pay for their work. That is, again, wrong. When you buy a book, you can give it away to someone for free, you can lend it to someone (libraries exist!), you can pretty much use it in any way you want. That, again, promotes the spread of ideas but decreases the incentive for the public to directly contribute to the rightholders' profits (to the same extent piracy decreases it, imo).
Why did we choose the copyright over other possible incentive systems? Because we were familiar with it. It started with controlling the printing press for religious reasons. In UK, the Stationers' Company guild had full control over all printing presses [2]. Controlling every printing press is way easier than controlling what people write on their own paper. After public protests, the right was revoked, which understandably didn't satisfy the Stationers' Company. Seeking to regain control, they tried to convince the parliament to give them a printing monopoly again in different ways - and finally they, quite reasonably, realized authors are dependent on publishers, and decided to ask the parliament to grant the monopoly to authors instead of publishers [3]. In my opinion the law was quite reasonable, didn't affect the general public much and had a sane copyright term - especially considering information density/production rate was way lower back then. This however shows it was designed with the publishers' interests in mind from the very start, and was meant to restore a lost monopoly. Copyright law is thus born from a centralized distribution model - where every printing press is controlled by a single entity. It was made in an effort to secure maximum profit for said entity in a way the government can compromise upon. That said, it doesn't mean copyright doesn't have economic benefits, its impact just needs to be carefully considered.
The distribution model, however, had to be centralized at the time. A copyright system that heavily biases towards centralized distribution isn't that bad if the distributor count is low and the entry barrier is high. It can be said that copyright didn't affect the balance of power too much - it biased towards centralized distribution, but in exchange it allowed a bunch of indirect ways to access the content, and it entered public domain soon enough.
It repeated for music and movies - rental stores, radio, TV served for idea spread. Home taping was allegedly killing the industry, but even if you ignore the desire to support the artist or own an official copy, official copies' quality was objectively superior, so I don't think it affected profits much. But home taping was an important landmark. It meant everyone could become a publisher now. Buying a cassette recorder is way cheaper than buying a printing press. This meant you can (illegally) "republish" others' works, but it also meant you can (legally, but inefficiently) publish your own works. Over time the gap closed. At the moment, anyone can easily create perfect copies and distribute them anywhere in the world. Spread of knowledge became so easy the very premise of copyright is now wrong.
Before, there were ways to access content cheaply (such as libraries). What changed is efficiency. Going to a library is a pain in the ass, it might not have the book, the book might be lent out to someone already even if there is some library somewhere in the world where the book is available. I can assure you that even if piracy didn't affect the copy count, it would be just as much of a disruption - now you would be able to borrow the book from a random person in the world if at least one copy isn't in use, which is true in most cases. Piracy is much more convenient, much more efficient than public libraries, and that didn't sit well with rightholders.
Naturally, they still wanted control over that power. You know about most of it. DMCA, DRM, anti-circumvention laws. Code became law. Modifying or even figuring out the meaning of some code became illegal - after all, figuring out how DRM decryption works equals bypassing it. We started living in an ironic world where laws and reality conflict. Legal control reached its high - programmable laws, how cool is that! - but control over illegal distribution reached zero.
That essentially killed the public domain. DRM-protected content cannot ever enter public domain, because breaking its protection is illegal (it can be argued that breaking DRM with the purpose of releasing a non-copyright-protected work from DRM protections is legal, but in that case you could just break the DRM of your own work and publish the algorithm, so that's clearly not the case). Fair use died in a similar fashion.
To offset the ease with which content is spread, rightholders built artificial legal walls. Content they own became leverage over subjecting distributors to their policies. DRM, large advance payments (that obviously don't go to the original artists), ensuring favorable terms. Despite the ease of distribution, if you want to do it legally, you better have billions and billions of dollars. Spotify pays very little to the artists to the point it's only a marginally better alternative to piracy, but that's fine for the major labels that hold their content hostage to receive extra money they take at expense of everyone else. If you want to start a Spotify competitor, nobody cares about your technology - you must have looots of money to make it legal AND make it have a comparable content database. If you want to start a Steam competitor, nobody cares about your technology - just pay game developers to make their content exclusive to your platform. If you want to start a Netflix competitor... actually sure, do it, further contributing to the streaming service fragmentation and piracy rates and showing the inefficiency of copyright to everyone. In a world where everyone can become a publisher for free, we rely on a single entity having a monopoly. That's no coincidence - it was designed that way, in a different world with different restrictions on what is and isn't possible.
I also hate the industry's stance on piracy.
I firmly believe it isn't as much of a problem as they make it out to be, and is caused mostly by content accessibility, whether it's region restrictions, services that are incredibly annoying to use, or the region's average salary being not enough to purchase said content. If you take a moral stance - sure, buy it legally or don't consume it, or pirate it and feel bad, but if you really find it difficult to buy the content you consume for the aforementioned reasons, you pirating stuff hardly has an economic impact, and I personally don't find it wrong at all. Some rightholders are also putting the "we provide jobs" argument, but the money would simply go to a different industry and won't affect job count (Perhaps only if the rightholder is in a different country).
That said, while the public stance is annoying, I do think anti-piracy measures can increase revenues for some parties. In case of music, if less people buy it and more people go on live shows, the label's revenue decreases and the artist's revenue increases. In fact despite the music industry's profit (read: direct music sales) having decreased due to piracy, musicians' profits are only increasing [4]. Latest anti-piracy restrictions didn't affect sales, possibly because the "pain in the ass to access legally" reason is gone for some content and in these cases the only reason to pirate remains inaccessible price [5] [6]. Many game pirates say they pirate AAA games but buy indie games, so I assume anti-piracy measures help AAA game companies as well, not to mention it costs little for them and grants them a peace of mind (though it also causes most avid DRM opponents not to buy it). Digital piracy also obviously affects physical piracy sales, though I can hardly see physical pirates advocating for stricter anti-piracy laws. I believe in people, and I believe those who have the money and want to support the artists will do so whether or not they pirate (pirates at large aren't against supporting the artists - they are against artificial scarcity, see Flattr), and piracy will only give them a possible way to access it - it was shown with Radiohead's PWYW experiment, and public libraries for that matter (As I showed before, libraries' only practical difference from piracy is efficiency, even though legally they are quite different; but perhaps I'm wrong and efficiency does make it or break it). In cases where piracy increases availability, it can indirectly increase sales when content becomes legally available, or at least cause more people to talk about it and slightly affect sales within the availability region. Essentially, high piracy rates show demand - either for better service, or for a lower price, or for better company politics if nothing else.
Anti-piracy laws also affect preservation and creativity.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The current copyright terms are simply obscene. Life+70 years is enough for everyone to completely forget about the work's existence. It's a hell for archivists, especially when the original copies are likely to deteriorate in 100 years, and some works simply can't be archived after some time (Some online-only DRM for example). Not to mention the terms seemingly keep being extended forever, making public domain a thing of the past even for non-DRM'd works.
Now, derivative works.
I can understand authors that want to profit from derivative works - I would feel entitled to some profits from a commercial movie adaptation of a book I wrote as well (And I'm open to arguments as to why I shouldn't feel that way). However, when companies like Nintendo take down non-commercial derivative works that would never affect their revenues in any way nor affect their public image, it makes me sad and angry. Sure, the game authors can use their own characters instead of Nintendo characters, but that would be a different game. They are looking for particular aesthetics, they used particular characters as an artistic expression - just like samplers use sounds because they feel their work benefits from that sample, not because they aren't capable of producing music from scratch. Copyright is simply suppressing their artistic expression in this case.
Finally, my opinion on patents.
I think it's nice that they force you to document a technology. It can potentially incentivize research in some cases, and are harmful in other cases, where patent owners refuse to sublicense them. Scientific progress rate is increasing, yet patent terms stay the same - they should be reconsidered. I think enforcing drug patents in 3rd world countries is overprotection, human lives > ensuring a global monopoly (it won't even affect revenue from 3rd world countries if the countries can't afford it in the first place). I also think software patents go against the spirit of IP laws, I can hardly see them encouraging innovation. I think a good solution would be removing software patents, and forcing to submit program's code to copyright it (in the same way patents require documenting the technology).
P.S. I don't mind if you call piracy stealing, after all, "stealing" an idea is a widely acceptable usage of the word
[0] - "incentive, not property, or natural law is the foundational justification for American copyright" - James Madison
[1] - see "Battle of the booksellers"
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
[4] - https://torrentfreak.com/artists-make-more-money-in-file-sharing-age-than-before-100914/
[5] - https://japantoday.com/category/national/a-month-after-download-law-consumers-spending-less-on-music-survey
[6] - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/18222718314/is-there-any-value-cracking-down-piracy-if-it-doesnt-increase-sales.shtml