Having said that, people who actually use torrents regularly know their way around Google and other web-based search engines, and this move, therefore, should have little or no effect on that particular demographic.
I would love to subscribe to netflix, hulu, hbo, etc but all my favorite TV shows are always on different networks. I wouldn't mind paying for the service (but not for 3 of them), but the online streaming mirrors are really good at what they do.
Bing just works. Its has significantly less bias than google which is why I always use 2 search engines.
Now we've been without any TV or streaming services for about six months, and relying on a Kodi box and my collection of ripped DVDs.
We spend more time together as a family.
It only works if there are enough seeders, otherwise I have a seedbox that I FTP into for watching some movies I haven't seen yet.
Chris Bell is someone who I heard talk recently on a podcast about this. He makes documentaries and discussed how hard it is just to break even making a documentary because of how Netflix/HBO/etc structure deals and vendor lock in.
Edit : To me "piracy" of music was a new idea : free access and distribution of digital contents, because we technologically can, and it doesn't kill anyone