That's not a very different argument from saying people will steal merchandise and sell it on the corner because consumers prefer to pay less and not walk the aisles.
And the store is price fixing with nearby stores.
I think theres a difference between opportunistic crime, and reasonably upstanding people being utterly frustrated with a market status quo.
If course there is a ton of piracy that is just straight up theft from perfectly convenient platforms, but the unacceptable, anticompetitive commercial platforms are the core that keeps the community going, I think.
With physical goods, if the store is utterly terrible, at the very worst someone can buy and resell the product at a nicer store. Intellectual property you are not allowed to do that. Everything is a vertically integrated monopoly.
Do you not think that's true? Why do people steal merchandise and sell it on the corner?
You see an almost identical argument all the time wrt cigarette taxes - even though cigarette buyers have inelastic demand, there's a limit to how high you can raise the taxes, because eventually everyone will be buying smuggled cigarettes.
The evidence says that piracy actually increases the value of the original as pirates spend more money on the media than they would without the piracy option
I don't agree. For many people, it's the only way to access TV. Wide access to broadcast media is a basic right, not a luxury. Some would say (me, for example) that it's neccesary for the proper functioning of civic society.
Meanwhile I note that free-to-air TV has been in decline for over a decade, at least in the UK. Cable and satellite services have been stealing the broadcasters' lunch. BBC News has an ever-shrinking circle of reporters (which they nowadays refer to as "editors").
I have no use for a streaming "package"; I don't watch sports and athletics, vintage sitcoms or new-release movies. I have a Sky dish and DVR, with the basic package. I gather Sky want to move me over to streaming, which would mean I'd have to upgrade my internet service.
Which seems like a very strong claim.
If anything I'm half-expecting the UK to start taxing individual creators who livestream on Twitch or YouTube (or perhaps to tax the platforms, or require the viewers to have a TV licence). That would indeed be egregious.