You are absolutely right.
Seriously though, I do think that is the case. It would be self-righteous to argue otherwise. It's just the scale and the nature of this, that makes it so repulsive. For my taste, copying something without permission, is stealing. I don't care what a judge somewhere thinks of it. Using someone's good will for profit is disgusting. And I hope we all get to profit from it someday, not just a select few. But that is just my opinion.
I understand but I think this will be quite a quaint idea soon in all honesty. Imagine these things are able to progress the world of science, math, physics, and whatever else (they already are) and we stopped them because someone didn't make enough royalties first. That to me would be more repulsive. We stop/slow the progress of all humanity because there wasn't enough temporary gain for x individual who wrote y book. And if it all turns out to be bogus nonsense then I doubt x individual who wrote y book loses much in the process anyway.
This kind of thinking seems like a road for people to have to pay a license for the rest of their life after going to school for the knowledge they "stole" from their textbooks.