People who download movies/music/games do not edit the content to make themselves appear as the creators and artists. Quite the opposite, warez releases usually come with a synopsis and background info on the distributed work.

That's not true at all.. transcoding a video and uploading it to a video sharing site is editing the content and misrepresenting it and something it's not. If the quality of the transcode is poor, if the audio quality has been trashed or segments have been pan and scanned, cut-out or otherwise modified, then it's being represented in a manner that the author may not have intended or desired.

Warez releases are often ripped, modified and repackaged in a way that may or may not look or act anything like the original.

Copyright holders have the right to decide when, where and how their work is displayed, consumed and presented, but the public at large don't seem to give a damn anymore.

To add to that, the offenders here are not only lifting content but presumably profiting from it (with AdSense) as well.

Mininova make 1million pounds per year, probably more. What's the difference?

Mininova doesn't host or distribute the content.

Right, so actually storing the illegally-obtained copyrighted content is what you consider wrong.

In other words, you oppose the RIAA going after The Pirate Bay. But by your own argumentation going after, say, a college kid with a terrabyte of fileshared music on his computer is ok, because the material is hosted on his computer.

Could you please confirm that this is what you are saying, or admit that you're in fact engaging in sophistry to justify you stealing content (music), but at the same time defend yourself from others stealing your content (blog entries, technical articles).

The net result is the same though - revenue is taken from the content creator.

The net result is not the same. Revenue may be taken from the creator, but credit is not.

So you are saying that it's ok to pirate as long as you say "this was made by x, get the original here"? How about considering what the creator of said content wants?

By which ethical/moral reason why content authors should have the right to control all the copies of his work?

I can see misapproriation as an ethical issue, but copying, not at all.

Personally I don't think they can. I agree with misappropriation vs copying, but I still feel sad for the content creators. It must suck to put in thousands of hours into something that people love but you can't make money off it.

I'm not saying piracy is ok, I'm just saying that piracy is not the same as robbery and that taking credit for something that you didn't create is separate from piracy. The creators should have some control over their creations, but they don't have absolute control over it once they share it with other people. How much control they should have is still an open issue for me.

Correction: Revenues could goes either way.

Who argues that piracy is good? Perhaps inevitable and uncontrollable, not worth it for big industries to peruse. For music it's convenient, in this instance it is not.