Exactly, and that's sort of the issue with the system right now. People like to argue that they are whitelisting the sites that they use regularly; e.g. Reddit and newssites. But in practice it seems like that's a minority going through with it. I've always likened it to how pirates used there being no good services around to justify their actions; yet after Steam and Netflix became popular the majority just found some new justification.

Meh, video streaming services are still pretty terrible.

Just let me download a DRM-free file. That way I can play it offline on my preferred media device. If I decide to rewatch it a few days later, I don't have to worry about wasting extra bandwidth.

I don't mind paying for content and services. I'm fully cognizant of the reality that things cost money. But when the content isn't being provided through a fair medium, or the service sucks... People will go through other means.

Since I enjoy anime, I have paid subscriptions for both Crunchyroll and Funimation. Despite paying for their services, I always find it more convenient to download and play regular files. It's still worth maintaining a subscription, since it funnels some of that money to the studios.

Surprisingly enough, this is something the porn industry gets right. AFAIK, most paid/premium porn websites let you download any movie. No bullshit.

To be fair, I pirate video despite Netflix and other services because of the poor catalog or bullshit like region blocking.

I've stopped pirating music though - Spotify became good enough for me to be worth it.

So no, I bet a majority of your "pirates" will stop pirating if there was a decent legal alternative.