That's what I tell myself as I pirate everything online. Couldn't afford to preserve everything by buying it. The only way to guarantee preservation, personally, is to save it personally.
Then there are examples like Marion Stokes[2] who recorded 71000 tapes over 30 years.
Fast forward to today (ha ha), and I do think there is some justification for downloading 'pirate content' for archival purposes. In the same way that I think LibGen is a very important project even if it angers some.
To be clear, I believe in buying the items I'm actually going to read or watch to support the creators. Not just pirating everything.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/28/apollo-11-ta... [2]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/marion-stokes-televisi...