The whole publishing business is effectively a service of providing content created by the author to final users. And because of the uneven power of authors and publishers, the latter is able to grab almost 100% of the price paid by people. Music labels are used to pay artists after long lawsuits. These are the best cases. Scientific publishers do more: they require payments from authors too and don't pay reviewers.

In all cases, the price paid by the user is split in proportion which clearly shows that saying that "pirating" means stealing money from authors is utterly false. I have nothing against paying for books the amount really passed to authors plus some additional fair amount based on the true cost of distribution (eg. printing and transport or electronic storing and transfer) plus a modest profit. However, it is not the case nowadays.

Similarly, I would accept payments for articles in a model where the price for a good article wouldn't cover the costs of many worthless ones. The current model - subscription - is attempting to hide real costs of production of articles of very different value under average price forcing readers to purchase wholesale products. Why should one pay for "fillers" the same money as for good content?