TL;DR: They are being for the most part perfectly reasonable, and the rest of this comment suggests why that is.

Yes, and average cost and risk exposure that family sees is higher now, wages down or flat.

First order realization:

I've long maintained most families have a fixed entertainment budget. They have their monthly nut to crack, and entertainment falls into that somewhere, with a little flexibility here and there.

Say that's a few hundred dollars. Might be $200 or less, depending.

The various entertainment forms compete for those dollars, and sometimes compete to stretch the amount a little too. Something really special might displace some other spend, or warrant a draw from savings, use of credit, whatever.

This was my experience bringing up a family through the 90's and 00's. I had a few hundred bucks for entertainment, special spends, and that was basically it, unless there were very compelling reasons, say getting a new game console, or special event that warranted some other adjustment to allow for greater entertainment spending.

There is a near infinite demand for entertainment! Maybe not infinite, but it's a lot higher than the budgets would fund at the generally accepted market prices. This demand is both material, in that real, liquid dollars are there to satisfy the demand, as well as demand not backed by liquid dollars. (the latter being an opportunity to build relevance and sell through later, whether that is recognized as marketing efforts tend to be is another discussion)

Second order realizations:

The entertainment spend is made each month and every month overall, and that's true whether there is massive piracy, or not.

Additionally, content that is pirated hard also earns well. Content that is lightly pirated also tends to not do well.

Entertainment forms compete. Video game vs movie vs whatever. There is a little flexibility, but overall the dollars go where the value perception is highest. Basically max entertainment per dollar. How people see this is all over the map too.

Pricing up can be the right move, as can pricing down. Depends on value perception, relevance, and how that stacks up to the entertainment budgets out there and the different forms.

Third order:

Piracy =/= a loss.

Infringment is weird. It's not theft in that no one is denied property or rights. It's all about people doing or experiencing something they were not supposed to.

There is value created via infringement too. A lot of the sales opportunity boils down to personal relevance. When a content creator is irrelevant, they must somehow reach potential consumers, who then become opportunities for income.

Infringement builds relevance the same as licensed users do, and it all works the same, personal recommendations, sharing, all that stuff people do in order to trade on and participate in culture and relevance applies when people use the content whether it's infringing use or not.

All this suggests a strategy allowing infringement as investment in relevance which will deliver returns in the form of high value license rental or longer term media entitlement purchases later. Higher quality, greater availbility, as in "I'll buy this and share it with the others on my subscription.

Many people subscribe and share with parents, friends, family making good use of both the profile capability and device allowances. This is "infringement" in a similar sense to piracy, but different in that it's not a high priority for enforcement.

Finally, pricing / piracy / competition with other media forms tend to make pricing self-correct and settle in to maxima. There is a right price to capture more value with material demand backed by dollars. Too high, and other forms will garner more of the entertainment dollars, or other works in the same form may do that too. Too low, and value perception may be impacted as well as leaving money on the table.

Subscriptions / content distribution agreements are a way to leverage many works and secure a more consistent share of the entertainment spends without as much risk and costs associated with going solo against high value, easy access, players.

See HBO MAX and how it's basically owning the new release. Used to be going to a theatre or buying a first release media copy was the way to go on a new movie. HBO MAX subscribers get it on release day, and it's great, easy, you name it. Tons of revenue locked in, forecastable, and so on.

The more of this we see that adds value, the less piracy will matter because that will be satisfying demand not backed by liquid dollars, but will still contribute to relevancy and can be considered an investment in the future as those people may change socioeconomic status and be able to meet demand with real dollars in the future.

Where it does not add value, say exclusives to drive new subscriptions, like we see with Paramount+ carving out a new service for "Star Trek" essentially, piracy may well be a response as will other higher value subscriptions and purchases win out over the arguably crappy deal required to see what is compelling, but not worth the hassle production. Basically, the program was used to add value to the basic subscription tier, then elevated to a new / higher service level without adding very much other value.

As examples:

Our family loves HBO MAX for the no bull shit, flat fee get new movies deal. We watched the new Matrix movie on release day, as we have others, and gladly buy this service.

We hate the CBS games being played. Do not gladly buy. Would consider just waiting and pirating the Star Trek, because it's a PITA now, or too expensive / time consuming to sign up, watch, then cancel because there isn't anything else, blah, blah...

Prior to these common sense streaming services, our family would pirate quite a bit, while buying quite a bit with the problem being unable to buy in ways, and on time, to make sense. It was often unavailable, or painful, or way over the top expensive...