I guess so, in fact it would probably be OK for the advert to run "This is a graphic picture of how we will torture your family if we catch you pirating our product", just so long as no-one is depicted smoking a cigarette in the picture.

I hope no one actually reads this because I'll get my knuckles rapped for certain but the obnoxious anti-piracy ads are correct; copyright violation is a form of theft. Leaving out the legalisms is meant to get through to dumb bricks (not you, of course) that have a visceral feel for, "I take yours; you take mine". In the US we have to tell knot heads that shoplifting is theft as though they might lift a store off its foundation without this important clarification.

"Publish and be damned"? Okay, here goes.
Please don't hurt me...

> copyright violation is a form of theft

No! Theft deprives the rightful owner of their property, whereas copyright violation is an infringement of their right to control who may or may not make copies of their property. The legal precedent is Dowling vs the US, back in 1985.

If you steal the master tapes of a record in order to duplicate it, you're guilty of theft. But if you copy them and leave the originals with their rightful owner, you're doing something else entirely. Theft is a criminal offence, infringement is a civil matter.

Pedantic? Me?

Yup, like Raven said, both theft and piracy have legal definitions; and those definitions are different. Since they're both crimes, it seems reasonable to use their legal definitions.

> Leaving out the legalisms is meant to get through to dumb bricks

In this case, the "legalisms" are the actual definitions of the crimes. Leaving them out is intended to get through to uninformed (not stupid) people, but that doesn't change the fact that it's lying.

There's a reason for the lie, though, and it's a financial one. If you can persuade people that unauthorised duplication is theft, then you can persuade them that every unauthorised copy has deprived you of a sale. And of course, you can then attach a monetary value to that - even though in many cases, downloads are used to sample purchases in a try before you buy stylee.