> I have no idea why a person would pay for a VPN to trickle torrents when they could pay the same to get usenet and download 1080p movies in a couple of minutes, or 4k in ~10.

I don't know what services you're using, but I can download 4k in sub-10 minutes from my seedbox. My understanding was usenet did not have as many options.

The reason to switch from resold to infringed is that infringed is a superior substitute. However, these are not the only two substitutes in the market, and given that the consumer is consuming a stream of items over time, it is the case that by switching to infringed that the consumer will have less reason to ever buy, either at all or in the same quantity, the substitutes that make money for the creators, such as paid streaming or new discs, and so it is plausible (and for many individual consumers likely) that the impact on creators will be non-negligible.

I’m not sure that follows. Someone bought the content new. When someone else buys their old stuff, this gives them more money with which to buy new content. I suspect this is a very small effect, but I doubt it’s zero.