The value of said work lies in the consumer, not the producer. If consumers by in large don't want to pay for something, then it simply isn't valuable and producing something in that segment and then complaining about piracy is rather pointless. You know going in consumers don't value that because they're accustomed to getting it for free. You had better expect piracy.
Your point about value lying in the consumer is a good response to the parent. The parent implies that society should invent business models to protect people who do things (but then even fails to make the point through use of word "generally").
However, I don't think the rest of your points are strong. People might not want to pay for apples, but that doesn't give them the justification to steal them. That's not because they don't value them - clearly they do. Or else they wouldn't want them.
Copying is different to stealing because in copying you don't deprive the creating from anything apart from completely arbitrary rights that the law grants to them.
It may also be worth raising that there's room for a difference between protection of 1. privacy (this photo is of me and I don't want it released because that would be invasive to a reasonable definition of privacy); 2. first release (I created something but it's personal, I haven't released it to anyone, and don't want people redistributing it - this is an anti-right, but more reasonable than the next one); 3. Protection of publishers (I create something, and the government gives me a monopoly over all copies and derivatives of it to such an extent that government invades people's civil liberties to protect my business models).
The apple comparison isn't apt; apples are physical products, I'm talking about intellectual products.
Copying isn't stealing, so yea, it's different.
As for the final paragraph, all of those are rather easily solved by realizing that information will be copied whether you like it or not. If you don't want it out there, don't release it. Fake government monopolies on information copying is a dying model, the death throws of the old guard trying to cope with a world they don't understand. Information will be free, eventually.
