Stolen or not ... you might as well see this issue from the opposite point of view: the companies steal from us:
the problem with activation is: you cannot use your software for which you have paid a lot of money  if the company doesn't activte it. Maybe they are being sold to some investor from Mars who decides to stop this product line.
This has not yet happend frequently but it will be a big issue in the future. There are still people out there who use DOS software. If activation had been invented 20 years earlier they would not be able to do use it any more. And this is theft.