I don't think the RIAA has been in the standards business since the days of vinyl; CD and DVD "standards" are set by industry consortia.

I'm pretty sure that "ripping" does come from "rip off", but it's short, sort of descriptive (like ripping a piece of paper off an infinite pad), and well-established. (Also highly conducive to puns; one of the rippers I use on Linux is called Jack.)

I agree that copyright infringement is not theft; neither is it piracy. It's not even a crime, or at least it wasn't until certain special interests started lobbying Congress to make it one. "Infringement" is a perfectly good word for it; it just doesn't have the connotation of illegality that the publishing industries want it to have.