Visits to piracy websites have increased 12% in the past four years

I think you missed the OP's point about the ongoing enshitification of paid services. From the words of Gabe Newell, "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

The reason why so many people are pirating even when they can afford it is because companies continue to make their services worse for their paying customers. Simply "paying for your content" will encourage these companies to continue their predatory, behavior.

Edit: I think I should add this isn't really true if you can buy physical copies of the content, but that's becoming less and less of an option as large streaming services make sure the only way to watch their content legally is buying their shitty subscriptions

If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.

I hope you noticed that the key phrase in your comment is "your content"

Good luck claiming any of the content on the streaming platforms as "your"

no

There are a lot of times where my privacy set up, which isn't anything fancy, precludes me from watching something. That coupled with the fact that prices have been consistently rising in our late stage shit system, you have to realize at some point that the same system that drives companies to scrape every possible iota of a profit out of users is the same system that makes people equally not want to be gutted financially and have every data point about themselves be out on an open market. Complacency doesn't change anything.

Cringe