"But if you're the copyright owner, you've lost the use of the money you would have earned, had they bought the software instead of swiping it." Very true. I was going to address that but forgot to. The difference is that you don't claim the copyright violator "stole" the money, you claim he stole the software. Loss of potential income (after all, the copyright violator might or might not have bought the software if he had to pay for it, so it was potential ) is not the same thing legally as theft. Nor is loss of use the same thing as loss of income. In a real court, loss of use is a real test of whether something is theft or not. Copyright violation does not pass the test.