using Nintendo as an example of a victim steels me in the other direction
Yes, Nintendo is pretty disgustingly anti-consumer in a lot of cases, but in the case of the DS in Korea, I think they were entirely justified in just not releasing their next console here. Why bother when it’s going to get immediately hacked and sold chipped in every little video game store with a pile of burned discs next to it? If you’re selling something, and you know one of your customers is going to take your thing and copy it and resell it, why on Earth would you ever sell anything to them ever again?
I agree we shouldn’t immediately label piracy as theft, but we definitely shouldn’t dismiss it as totally harmless, either.