I find it funny how they portray the reason they are under attack somehow being related to freedom. They are facilitating the theft of copyrighted content; that is why they are under attack, not "for beliefs of freedom of information".
How can it be stolen if the owner still has it?
What file-sharing folks "steal" are legal fictions not tangible objects.
Media corps steal from us all privatizing bits of the culture and selling them back to us. Perhaps in the old days of reasonable copyright arguments could be made but really what is my moral obligation to respect the rights of say the Avengers film's makers? The film is based on characters Marvel stole from Kirby (characters that should be public domain by now). So when a person downloads that film is he stealing from Joss Weldon, Stan Lee or Jack Kirby?
the word theft does not even apply to file-sharing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft I disagree with your test analogy what test is a pirate cheating on? In my opinion it is okay to rob mafia owned banks.
(if you can get away with it).