I think you missed the OP’s point about the ongoing enshitification of paid services. From the words of Gabe Newell, "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

The reason why so many people are pirating even when they can afford it is because companies continue to make their services worse for their paying customers. Simply “paying for your content” will encourage these companies to continue their predatory, behavior.

Edit: I think I should add this isn’t really true if you can buy physical copies of the content, but that’s becoming less and less of an option as large streaming services make sure the only way to watch their content legally is buying their shitty subscriptions