Piracy is a complex topic, no need to reduce it into black/white trivial one.
Say you grew up as poor (90% of the world easily) and buying 1 original music CD equals to a week of net salary of your hard working parents just routed to that. This was the situation of me and all my peers when I was growing up. There was simply not an option to buy it legally, unless you accepted to go few days in full hunger mode (which folks think is easy until you are actually there and would literally kill people for food, our mind is really interesting and often very rational place).
So you either pirate or have nothing. Nothing was stolen with creating a copy since those money would never go to copyright owners. Now imagine computer game would require 2 or 3 weeks of similar sacrifice. Again, my choldhood/teenage years. On top of the fact you sometimes can't even buy it legally unless you commit to serious travel.
Yeah, I could go on for a very long time, just my own experiences, not even involving the simple fact that in many places including my current one downloading is completely legal and laws are very much OK with that. If I ever wanted to support artists I would send them money directly, there is always a way if one is serious enough.
But rich western kids want to do visible poses on trivialized topics and 'statements' to their peers even though its long term in vain and zero sum game, not wonder about deeper stuff and actually act upon it (with respect to exceptions).
This is what a lot of anti-piracy outfits do not understand. There is content I as an Indian can either not access because it is geographically limited or because it is just not within my means. Granted, lately the second problem has vanished.
If I hadn't pirated games as a kid, I would not have bought my PS5 or my Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. My Steam account has, like everyone else's, a few hundred games now and it's also full of games I once pirated. Funnily enough I haven't played them after purchasing them. But I bought these so I can install them easily. I'm still mad that I cannot find a legal copy of TMNT Out of the Shadows so I have to resort to using piracy for it but that doesn't work on the deck and I need to maintain a Windows PC if I want to play it.
I recently cancelled my Netflix Subscription and bought 6 8TB drives to build a NAS. I haven't gotten around to it yet but I've been downloading a couple of shows I've watched previously and miss, some of which can't be found on OTT in India.
If in 2023 you are telling me I cannot watch something because I am in India or because the production company simply didn't put it on a streaming platform, that gives me impetus to pirate it.
And if you have a show but without either certain episodes for the sake of censorship or if you're missing entire seasons even though it's been a year or more, that is definitely grounds for piracy.
It's even worse with manga and comics. I cannot legally gain access to some manga because they're not sold here and because I can't find them online. Tachiyomi exists and I love it.
Don't even get me started on how ebooks are fleecing us all. I switched to a Boox from a Kindle and I love my decision.
