I'm pretty anti-piracy, and I don't think ad-blocking is piracy.

Metaphors are dangerous, but, for the purposes of this specific comparison, I see piracy as breaking into a video store and taking a disc, and ad blocking as allowing some people into my house but not others.

YouTube is free to block me as a user or put its content behind a paywall if it doesn't like me doing this, but I am also free to decide what comes into my browser.

and they won't block you, because they understand that their dominance of this particular style of video content requires allowing everyone in.