The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charge you whatever ("watch these ads") to see the game. So there is no actual incentive to give you what you want; there is only incentive to sell games to networks at as high a price as possible. (Also, sell advertising, and modify the game's rules to ensure that there is extra advertising at the 7 minute and 3 minute mark.)

Basically, at one end of the equation is some dudes passing a ball around. At the other end of the equation, is you watching that. In the middle, of course, there are the middlemen, and they all want a huge cut for doing absolutely nothing. Anti-piracy legislation is all about protecting the middlemen who realize that they do nothing and they need the government to bail them out.