I believe the GP was referring to most quality rips originating from physical media (ie. 4K UHDs).

In a world without physical media, the best piracy can deliver is no better than the best encoding streamers have available (and that assumes DRM circumvention remains forever possible, otherwise we're gonna get worst quality from re-encoding decoded playbacks)

> the quality of ahem copies is often no worse than you'd get from an official streamed source

"No worse than streamed" is a far cry from a quality high-bitrate 4k UHD physical release.