No, you aren't following my argument. Having obtained something else legally has nothing to do with the argument; I just mentioned it as counter evidence to the suggestion that my motivation is cheapness. I could give you an example where I've bought nothing by the artist, because none of it is for sale at any price.

The argument is that copyright is intended to encourage the creation and distribution of artistic works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause). Locking works away not to be experienced does not encourage their creation or distribution. Copying them when they are not otherwise available does, however, and does not financially harm the creator of the work (since they wouldn't have received money for something you can't pay for anyway).

Clearly paying to experience works is better still, as far as the aims of copyright, but I'm talking about cases where that option is not open. In those cases, I don't see any moral wrongness in copying.

In the case of The Oatmeal, he fell into a gray area where the work was kinda sorta available, but at very high price and a huge amount of inconvenience. But I was more interested in the general case, since you seemed to be making a general statement that it was unacceptable.