I'm not familiar with how these IPTV companies market their services, but I'm extremely skeptical of the notion that people don't realize they're buying something illegal when they're paying a small percentage of what the services themselves would cost.

It's like those folks that sold bootleg DVDs out of their trenchcoats in Manhattan - the defense of "gosh, I never knew buying a just-released-in-theaters Hollywood blockbuster for $5 by some dude on the side of Broadway was illegal" was never going to fly.

I guess that the legal framework that enables the orders was inherited by the Irish state. (according to wikipedia the orders can be made in Canada and Australia too)

Non-sequitur. The Internet only enables the copying of bits and not their theft, as the original bits aren't removed from their source. A remote-copy-and-delete might be considered a theft, but Bittorrent has no delete provisions and that's not really inherent to the infrastructure of the Internet per se (e.g. your network card can't physically make bits on the other side in storage disappear).

That's why I don't feel bad pirating textbooks.

Buddy we’d still be listening to cds if pirating didn’t exist.

You’ll find that a pretty unpopular attitude around here (hence the downvoting on your comment, and I assume mine shortly), but you are right.