> What a fine technically correct and utterly useless distinction
It's not a useless distinction though. One can argue that stealing is bad because when I steal your car, you don't have access to your car anymore. If I were to copy your car I wouldn't harm you.
That doesn't mean it's okay to illegally copy something, but comparing it to theft is unhelpful at best and misleading at worst.
Even if he was authorized to make the copy he would have still needed to pay to use the copy.
He's not authorized to make or use the copy.