It's great to see I'm not the only person who thinks this way. There are going to be no shortage of thin analogies and excuses in response to you in afraid. Regardless of the merits of copyright and how "dumb" the laws enforcing it are, I can't see how you can argue with your point about the content creators being deprived of an income. Maybe those creators do get screwed but they're still getting something and to say pirating is okay because maybe the system changes and those creators get a bigger piece of the pie or change their business model seems wrong to me. Who are we to decide what amount of collateral damage is acceptable? Like you said, this stuff is easily accessible legally.

Just about all of us can easily get what's primarily being distributed on sites like Pirate Bay. Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Cable Company X On-Demand streams, HBO Go, Spotify, etc. it's all out there and far easier to access than hopefully getting a high quality rip off a torrent site. Okay, maybe some things aren't available in all countries and maybe the business model makes it next to impossible to buy a copy of a movie or song once and have it on all your devices in some cases. But really, is that really the primary use case for the Pirate Bay? Someone is going to say it is for them but if you believe that that's the primary use case across the board then you've got to be an apologist or just lying to yourself. Have I pirated movies, music, and software? Absolutely. Because I couldn't afford or just didn't want to pay for it. But I sure as hell am not telling myself that it was okay because copyright is evil and because "business models" and people who pirate wouldn't pay anyway so no one loses money. I live in the real world, not the ideal world.