The problem is that illegal downloading isn't just a few bad apples actively seeking to screw over hard working people, it's more like an inevitable result caused by the accepted definition of "theft" (and all the usual implications it carries) being applied to a medium in which it isn't compatible.
The arguments justifying piracy are simplistic because they stick to the way people naturally think about theft, ie. theft = depriving someone else of their property for your own gain. The vast majority of people aren't going to adapt their moral systems to the relatively new possibilities of the internet in such a short space of time, and the producers of the products being pirated have for the most part none nothing to adapt to the situation in a sensible manner, choosing to punish pirates and paying customers alike instead of creating a business model which actually works on the internet.
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