I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that I'm the US at least, it's still not theft, but copyright infringement, which also means it doesn't get handled in criminal court, but is instead handled as a civil lawsuit.

I just want to point out to anyone who thinks this is a viable legal defence, It isn’t.

Of course it isn't. Copyright laws were written by the same kind of people who decided that corporations gets to "people."

Of course it is no viable defense, but stealing is the wrong term, because stealing is used for the theft of physical goods missing somewhere else. This would be along illegal usage semantically, or as another comment pointed out copyright infringement.

Legally speaking they're not going after you solely for piracy pretty much ever, at least not in America, unless you're making a profit from it.