Piracy: Good or Bad?

If you were to ask one of my parents this question, they would say it's most certainly bad.

They are right.

They are wrong.

Piracy is obviously bad for the producer of the product that's being pirated.  It's this perspective that majority of middle aged adults see because they are not interested in be consumers.  Most pirating sites are aimed towards attracting young customers.  They rake in a large profit because the young generation is able to keep up with common interests in movies,  TV shows, and music while paying nothing.
Sounds great eh?  Being among these young people I can assure you I support piracy companies.  It used to be a huge deal trying to decide what songs and movies to buy because each one was so goddamn expensive.  Quickly, pirating sites gained tonnes of popularity.

However there's an issue.  When products are pirated no money gets back to the producer.  When pirating gets put of control, even super popular movies don't make much profit.

So what to do?  We only have two options and neither one is very appealing; poorly made media, and not being able to enjoy all of the well-made products because they're far too expensive.

Piracy is quite the paradox.

We'll have to fall somewhere in the middle and just hope that our rich friends actually pay for movies and music more than we do.