There's something to be said for the cord-cutting software ecosystem supporting more-than-casual piracy experiencing huge improvements. If you have the hardware, you can host your own media using Plex as a server, and Sonarr to manage your library and automate acquisition of new TV episodes.
Plex is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. It Just Works™. You need a decent internet pipeline to support remote streaming, but LAN is a breeze to setup. It's so feature-rich I don't know where to begin. I honestly prefer it to any other streaming service. Apps on just about every platform you can think of (they had yet to release apps for Nintendo consoles last I checked).
I have my whole family set up on my server, and it doesn't cost them a dime. The primary drawbacks from their perspective are that they need to request shows and movies to be added, and I naturally don't have Netflix-level availability, but hey. Shit's free.
So when a cord-cutter with enough savvy to pirate video can actually replicate the services rendered by Netflix et al. on their own, why would they pay five times for something centralized that they can get for free[1]?
[1] Plex has $7 month premium features, with the option for a lifetime pass equal to about 2.5 years of subscription.
People don't use Netflix et al. because they want to follow the law. They use them because they're a better service and experience than the alternatives (PVR TV and DVDs).
When streaming services no longer offer a superior user experience, there's not much reason to use them. Maybe we'll see a new round of "You wouldn't download a car" ads.
I would happily pay for a service that let me download content to my personal machine, without DRM, and without restrictions. The price paid for that right now is breaking the law, and current enforcement of that law hardly a price to pay.
Piracy is copyright infringement or license term violations.
Theft is a property crime. These are different things.
Those heavily invested in intellectual property rights laws would like to conflate them, but they are--and always will be--fundamentally different offenses.
And the industry propaganda is frankly ridiculous. Hell yes, I would download a car. But not if it came loaded up with malware, spyware, region-locking, force-fed content, and DRM schemes.
The propaganda likewise portrays piracy as stealing from the creators and artists, when, in fact, this has already occurred by reassigning the copyrights to a corporate entity that routinely employs "Hollywood accounting" and other assorted dirty accounting tricks to avoid paying the creative drivers behind a cultural artifact in a manner the public would consider reasonable.
Duplicating bits is in no way comparable to depriving someone of physical property and excluding them from their use of it. At worst, piracy undermines someone's economic profits, derived from the enjoyment of government-granted monopoly, which is supposed to promote the useful arts by securing to authors and inventors exclusive rights for a limited time.
It is natural for opinions to vary on whether a schema that routinely re-assigns those rights to an entity separate from the author or inventor, for a period extending well beyond their lifespan, is still conformant with the intent of the law, but no matter how hard you try to force it, copying is not stealing. Forcing that for PR purposes further undermines what little respect remains for copyright infringement as its own offense. You can't inflate respect for one law by poaching it from another.
You may attempt to influence behavior and ethics by redefining the meanings of words, or by confusing one meaning of a word with another, but I can't guarantee it will be successful.
If I were to "pirate" an entertainment file, I would not alter my self-image to believe that I am now "a thief", just because you're quoting dictionary definitions at me. I may still feel vaguely guilty about it, but nowhere near the level of guilt I might feel by walking over to my neighbor's driveway and stealing their car, even though the open-market value of the car may be only $5k, and the open-market value of the recording may be $5M.
This difference arises because when I copy something, I do not deprive the person in possession of the use of it. If I steal, I do. The concept of dispossession is fundamental to the concept of theft. When I take your thing, you no longer have it. When I copy your thing, we both have it. If you are then put out because I am no longer motivated to rent your thing, that's the result of your improper assumption that the idea of the thing belonged to you exclusively.
When "theft" moves from the physical to the intangible, it becomes plagiarism or counterfeiting. It is a greater sin to cut out the credit scroll from the end of a movie than to copy it without paying. It is a greater sin to copy the maker's mark than to copy the design it marks.
I am not the sort to lie to myself to influence my own state of mind. Things are what they are, and if that state cannot be conveyed effectively with words, then the language is at fault. The words must change, rather than my mental model of reality. If you cannot separate in your mind the definition of "piracy" that concerns intangible property from the definition of "stealing" that concerns tangible objects, I would suggest using instead a term that is more descriptive, and not quite so ambiguous, such as "copyright infringement". If one cannot be a "pirate" without being a thief, then copyright infringers will simply cease to be "pirates".
You can't change reality by altering the description of reality. If you perfectly duplicate a copyright-protected file in a manner not allowed by fair use or by an implicit or explicit license granted by the privileged holder of the copyright, the holder is neither dispossessed of their file, nor deprived of any reputation benefit which may be associated with their control of the copyright. Copyright infringement is therefore not theft. If we cannot agree on what words mean, we cannot meaningfully communicate. And if someone is changing the meanings of their words mid-conversation, that might be perceived as dishonest communication.
Plex is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. It Just Works™. You need a decent internet pipeline to support remote streaming, but LAN is a breeze to setup. It's so feature-rich I don't know where to begin. I honestly prefer it to any other streaming service. Apps on just about every platform you can think of (they had yet to release apps for Nintendo consoles last I checked).
I have my whole family set up on my server, and it doesn't cost them a dime. The primary drawbacks from their perspective are that they need to request shows and movies to be added, and I naturally don't have Netflix-level availability, but hey. Shit's free.
So when a cord-cutter with enough savvy to pirate video can actually replicate the services rendered by Netflix et al. on their own, why would they pay five times for something centralized that they can get for free[1]?
[1] Plex has $7 month premium features, with the option for a lifetime pass equal to about 2.5 years of subscription.