If you are utilizing and enjoying the fruits of someone else's labor and creativity without compensating him for it, you have stolen it.

Even assuming a "without his permission" in that sentence, I still don't believe it counts as stealing. I still maintain that the reason that stealing a physical object is wrong, is that the original owner is deprived of it. The activity you describe deprives the original creator of nothing, and so isn't really stealing. It's often illegal, and it's arguably immoral, but saying that it's illegal or immoral because it's stealing is misleading.

You have to ask why people are so keen to describe this unrelated crime as "stealing" or "piracy". Usually it's because it's obvious, because of the deprivation consideration, that stealing and piracy are immoral and should be illegal. Labelling copyright or patent violations as "stealing" is often an attempt to avoid evaluating those activities as themselves for immorality or illegality.

Peter