I refer people here. When you get down to things, as this essay points out, all rights are property rights, and all property rights are Intellectual property rights. You can do nothing creative without thinking about it first.
That there was the death rattle of an ill-conceived and ill-delivered idea. When a pasture has become the target predators to the point where it can not be defended, and the predators cannot be driven out without destroying the pasture... nothing can be done but abandon it.
The copyright system is choking on the feces of its own impossibility, it CANNOT be saved - it may even be that the draconic measures of government meant to futilely try to save it will be the straw that breaks the back of government itself. The moghouls had the ability to control ideas back when ideas could be obtained only bound into physical objects... and even back then it was touch-and-go; now that information can move unfettered by physical containers, it's entirely impossible to maintain that monopoly.
And finally, piracy is immensely beneficial to the artist:
Of a given population, some percentage, x, is going to pay the artist for the art, up front, having found the artist by themselves.
A much larger percentage, let's arbitrarily call that y=10x (grossly conservative), will pay the artist for the art, up front, once it has been brought to their attention.
A much larger percentage, arbitrarily z=100x, will pay the artist for use of the art, after they've seen it and enjoyed it.
A much larger percentage, arbitrarily a=1000x, will tell their friends about the art, having gotten it for free, but wouldn't have ever bought it.
Now, the kicker is this: x is a function of b - findability. The 1000 freeloaders to each die-hard avantgarde (member of the basic x), who aren't withholding any money, as they were never going to have spent it, are going to boost the crap out b, expanding the artists income basis on all three paying levels (x, y, z).
And that's not taking into account income from ads, which in some cases may make even a-users profitable (or at least reduce overhead).
Piracy is not harmful to the author, only to the leeches that artists have had to associate with for the last century.