I wonder if a good rebuttal would be...
you say i stole their work... did they MAKE this MP3? this MP3 isn't theirs is it? Did I take this MP3 from THEM?
or... say you drew a cat... i made a copy of your cat that looks exactly like your cat... but it's not I maked the cat from your cat.
IANAL
I don't mind sharing what happened. I wanted to catch up on past episodes of Rick and Morty so I went to Adult Swim's website, plugged in my cable provider, and the site appeared to be hosed somehow... it kept getting stuck in a buffering loop and the videos never started.... I tried a couple of PCs and a few web browsers and for whatever reason they just weren't playing that day. So I got on the old Pirate bay and downloaded the last two seasons. My internet is shut down the next morning with a C&D notice.
So how is it illegal to download a show on a network I pay for and that payment includes unlimited streaming of all the shows? I'm sure technically it isn't the same thing, but come on... how about a little fair use?
I agree with that argument btw.... piracy isn't stealing... it's unauthorized copying and yet the laws are made around theft instead of what it should be... the crime of taking a magazine off the rack and Xeroxing it.... I'm sure it's illegal, but I'll bet it's a pretty petty crime.