When I said piracy was the better service, what I meant is it offered much higher quality, not that it was easier to use. Piracy actually takes a ton of work. Of course paying for a streaming subscription is the easiest solution: people just pay and enjoy what it offers. The problem is the fact they consistently offer the lowest quality product.
1. Horrible video compression to save bandwidth
When they offer users high definition content, they're actually talking about the resolution of the image. The quality and detail of the image will almost always be much worse if compared to another source such as Blu-Rays. Netflix somehow manages to add compression artifacts to nearly 100% black frames. Scenes with a lot of movement are actually painful to watch.
Compare that to the obssessive attention to detail you can often find in piracy communities and the winner is obvious.
2. Censorship
These services aren't afraid to cut content in order to broaden their audiences. They may even be required to do it by law. Pirates obviously don't have these problems.
3. Annoying copyright issues nobody cares about
Netflix once had Terminator 1 and 3 but not 2, as well as Spider Man 1 and 3 but not 2. Was the license for these movies too expensive for them? Who knows? Who cares?
Want to watch a classic film? An influential film? Chances are it's not on Netflix. Where is it then? Who knows... Maybe not actually available at all anywhere no matter where you look.
Piracy just ignores these issues. As a result it gives you access to almost everything humanity has ever created.
4. DRM
Netflix won't give you access to their precious 4k+ streams if it feels your device isn't locked down enough. Disney is even more aggressive with these measures. Even on my perfectly locked down PS4 system it won't let me download content ahead of time. Apparently they think network connections are reliable.
Pirates simply don't have these problems.
5. Superior technology
Netflix's video player is garbage compared to mpv. The video players of every other streaming service manage to be even worse. It's not just the basic-ness of it either: sometimes it stutters and falls out of sync with the audio, sometimes it screws up the rendering of subtitles...
The one area where streaming service technology wins is their ability to offer alternate audio streams.