This kind of shit is the reason I pirate all major-label and big studio content I want. I refuse to help feed their legal machine. I still pay for third-party, independent content. Anything else is fair game. I consider this approach to be far superior from a moral standpoint.
Everyone really ought to be doing the same. Stop feeding the MPAA/RIAA.
1. When you don't pirate, at the margin you'll give some of your time, attention, publicity, and money to the sort of producers you want to encourage, which would've gone to Big Content, except only for the money.
2. People rationalize. It's what humans do. When you have a reason not to pay, to what extent is it the main reason? You're both setting up a constant temptation to lie to yourself and clouding your motives to others -- they have more trouble telling how seriously to take your stated reason.
(My Big Content disclosure: a netflix subscription and a very occasional DVD or CD purchase -- the last one was Game of Thrones. Haven't been to the cinema in several years and I'm thinking of dropping netflix. Oh, I do still buy plenty of books, though the internet has cut into that. Also, I hypocritically pirate academic books sometimes and do the same for papers with no compunction at all (edit: barring evidence the actual author cares). Maybe that should've gone first, oh well.
When you don't pirate, at the margin you'll give some of your time, attention, publicity, and money to the sort of producers you want to encourage
Pirating from people who I don't want to encourage, and paying people who I do want to encourage are not mutually exclusive actions.
When you have a reason not to pay, to what extent is it the main reason? You're both setting up a constant temptation to lie to yourself and clouding your motives to others -- they have more trouble telling how seriously to take your stated reason.
For one, I don't particularly care what anyone else thinks of my media consumption habits. I state my reasons for pirating content - if someone disbelieves me, that is their prerogative.. the goal of not supporting people who campaign against me is achieved regardless.
In a world where I'd already watched Game of Thrones season 2 via torrent I'd still have consumed some of the other entertainments that I actually did, but less of them.
Because if you think it has enough value for you to watch it, but refuse to pay for it, you're not really protesting anything. You're just being a jerk. It isn't taking a principled stand to do something which helps your own wallet at the expense of the people making the content you watch.
For clarification, since I seem to have worded that unclearly: if your protest is indistinguishable from simply being greedy, don't be surprised if your message gets lost. If you think it's worth protesting, go all the way. Otherwise how am I supposed to tell that you really think your reason to protest them outweighs—even to you—your reason to watch the stuff they create?
I have the right to watch anything I want to because I need to understand my own society. And I can't have my money going to these organizations that are hostile to my interests.
The best solution is for these media companies to simply cease operations. The world will be no worse off if they just stop producing digital entertainment, a huge chunk of which is just propaganda anyway.
Aside from what other people have already said, you add to the statistics on people who download media illegally. These provide ammunition for the creation of crazy laws such as SOPA.
