That's a strawman. Theft involves actual loss for someone, and piracy - for the I-lost-count-after-the-first-three-hundred-and-sixty-four-thousand-times - is not theft, it's an infringement against a nonsensical law. All the RIAA and their clients are claiming is lost profits, which is major bullshit.
To pick your analogy, they are complaining that nobody is buying their TVs because a competitor building better and cheaper TVs has appeared, and demand that competitor be shut down to save their business model.
I wasn't defending antipiracy law, I was pointing out that the argument as written was completely wrong and pointless. You then say "BUT NO IT'S ACTUALLY DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF X" where reason X is completely not mentioned in the original post.
I guess I should have been more explicit; I agree with your conclusion but the argument was not the right and wouldn't convince anyone. It's like someone saying that Leprechauns aren't real because they know Lucky Charms commercials are CG; sure, but that's not why Leprechauns aren't real.
> To pick your analogy
Actually if you are going to say that, the analogy is that a competitor is building cheaper tvs that are otherwise exactly the same as your tvs, and they are already breaking the law to do so, but the law isn't really effective at stopping them from doing so. If you put it that way, it actually sounds awful.
It would be more like a competitor broke into their factory, stole the blueprints for their TVs, and then started to produce and sell the exact same models.
Of course, in your world, this 'theft' would be exactly the same as if they'd merely sneaked into the factory and stolen a blank piece of paper.
To pick your analogy, they are complaining that nobody is buying their TVs because a competitor building better and cheaper TVs has appeared, and demand that competitor be shut down to save their business model.