I would love to be able to watch the latest and greatest in entertainment within a day of it airing but that is not possible to do with legal means so 'everyone' turns to piracy.
I'm German so even if my favorite shows finally made it to Germany after years they are usually butchered by a sloppy at best dubbing. If I insisted on English audio I'd have to wait another year to buy the DVDs.
I would love to watch my favorite show with ads or even pay for some of them to be able to support them but unfortunately that's just not possible as of now.
And I'll never forget the debut of the Cosby Show in Germany and wanting to show my college friends this show I really liked - and realizing that without Bill Cosby's voice, it was utterly, hopelessly worthless. Not the first time Germans looked at me like I was crazy, but it was a formative experience.
Anecdotally, it worked.
People in the USA must have pirated it loads before it was shown on TV. And yet the TV numbers were still very impressive. This is evidence that piracy doesn't affect sales/viewing figures.
Result: everybody that wanted to see the show had already pirated it, and the viewing figures were miserable.
This has happened with several popular shows.
A 3 day window however is still too long for shows with real fans that want to participate in the global conversation. It may work for procedurals and sitcoms, but not for shows with big stories and cliffhangers like Lost, 24 and such.
Never mind the fact that you still get all the disadvantages of a commercial broadcast: fixed time, annoying station logo's, subtitles (or dubbing depending on the country) and most of all: incessant commercial breaks.
No thanks.