Your anecdote doesn't trump my anecdote; now we have two anecdotes.

No, it's not called theft. It's called infringement. You don't own the song, the poem, the story, the character, the image in the photo or the audio in the sample. One cannot own a song. What one has is an exclusive right to exploit a song.

I feel like your, "That's called theft," is an attempt to moralize and shame. But that's only called infringement among those who agree it is, because they agree it is. There is no cosmic law that makes it so and there is really no financial reality that requires it to be so.

It's not infringement if you use an algorithm that someone else figured out, and somehow software developers all manage. It's not infringement if I build my house exactly the same as the one you have an architect design, but architects do okay. It's not infringement when I perform a Jonathan Coulton song for money, and despite putting all his creative output in the Creative Commons, he still has a successful career.

The way things are are ARBITRARY and don't reflect morality or need. Over time copyright law has become entirely detached from the needs of artists and instead reflects the needs of the capitalists who seek to exploit artists' output.