I haven't put a lot of thought into intellectual property. But my initial thoughts are on par with what you said in your article. I do not believe that copying is the same as theft. I'd have to think about it some more but I might feel a little different about plagiarism.

It's one thing to copy something for your entertainment or education, but claiming someone else's work as your own and reaping the benefits of it seems objectionable.

I'll have to hash this out some more and see how it fits into what I wrote here.

When you copy something you aren't robbing from another person. Really the only way you could say that it is, is if you make the claim that you are robbing 'potential' resources from that person. But in my book potential crimes aren't crimes.

In reality I think this won't even be an issue much longer. It's easier to get on Spotify than download torrents anymore and open source software is really taking off. Hopefully intellectual property will be an arbitrary concept in the near future. Creators of content will find other ways of making money than selling copies.

Patents are bullshit though