Yeah, fair point.

I counter that I can go and see anything I want, if I'm prepared to accept a bit of risk and some morally dubious justifications.

The reality that the content owners face is that there are people making money off their work because they're not giving the paying customer what they want, and those other people are. That's a viable business that they're not profiting from. That's the reality. I'm not sure why it's not visible from the content owner's perspective.