Is the shrug, perhaps, shorthand for "Stealing is immoral because it deprives the owner of something they previously had; copyright violation does no such thing, and so if the only reason you believe copyright violation to be immoral is because it's stealing, then that's an unconvincing argument"?
Perhaps! However, I'd disagree with the statment that stealing is immoral because "it deprives the owner of something they previously had". Stealing is immoral IMHO because it is taking something you didn't pay for that the owner did not wish for you to have. In the case of a copyright we aren't talking about the physical file, media, etc.. We're talking about the information contained therein. Whether that is protectable is debatable, but this society says that it is (as I think it should be).

I suppose different understanding of morality is what it comes down to. I just don't understand why people would consider something that someone else creates to be of no protectable value because it comes from the mind rather than a factory. But that's where this disagreement lies, I suppose.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.