I think the main mistake piraters make is misidentifying what they are actually stealing. They are stealing EXPERIENCES, not megabytes. You watch a movie or listen to music to have an experience. The artists and technicians worked hard to create an experience you would enjoy and should get compensated for it, even if you don't actually enjoy it in the end they tried in good faith. The reason walking near an outdoor concert isn't stealing is because the quality and EXPERIENCE of actually being there is vastly diminished so you aren't really experiencing it. If enough people pirate and make that work unsustainable, piraters definitely WILL deprive us honest people of their products. Not to mention all those restrictions you claim to hate, like DRM, are YOUR FAULT, not mine, but I have to live with them, too. I think eventually all entertainment will only exist in tightly managed clouds and no one will be allowed to have local copies that can be then transferred for free somewhere else. We will always need to be connected to the internet to view them. And that's the fault of pirates.
First, thanks for the contribution. I really do love this discussion (not joking, trolling, etc). I think you're on point with that. The experience is definitely the 'product' we should be paying for. Unfortunately there is no practical way of quantifying experience. We don't pay for it that way. Is one $12 novel the same experience as ten music singles? I'm not convinced that 'experience' is the right way to look at this issue, from a legal or economic perspective.
To your point on restrictions, let's separate the different industries (music, movies, print) because those industries entered the digital world at different times and in very different ways.
There is a lesson to be learned from the music industry. They entered digital first with CDs, without even realizing what they were getting into. CDs contained unrestricted and extremely high quality music files. For a time, copying CDs was expensive (low price burners didn't come out for a while), and distribution of illegal copies wasn't feasible (low internet speeds, many people without internet at home). Plus, during this time the industry was involved in some shady business practices (price fixing, etc). They didn't have the foresight and understand of the impact of CD burners, high-speed internet, and MP3 players. Can't really blame them though; they were the first to dive into digital. They sued consumers; consumers backlashed; there was a defacto negotiation between consumers and the music industry in the courts and in public opinion; and we ended up with streaming where the artists make nearly nothing, and the consumers are upset about restrictions. It's a lose-lose.
Movie industry largely followed suit to the music industry; except they saw what was happening to music and put in some restrictions on their digital content. It helped a bit; but not enough. They largely followed the same path, and ended up with slightly better business models in Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. I haven't heard about movie studios complaining about streaming as much as musicians; so I assume the deal they struck is simply better.
There is also a lesson from the print industry. The print industry (books, magazines, etc) has largely been on the side-lines for this whole mess. They resisted jumping into digital for a really long time. They finally jumped with the Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad; and they are doing pretty good. Piracy is low, relative to music and movies. The reason I think is because the print industry had time to observe music and movies and they learned the lesson: when you jump into digital, you have to do it in a very controlled and consumer-friendly manner. It has to be so much easier to buy a book legally that people won't bother pirating. Amazon did this perfectly: I can read the first chapter for free (like in a book store or library), I can buy it for a reasonable price with one click, I can consume public domain stuff for free from the same interface, and I can use it to access what is in my public library. Apple does it very well too.
Apple is probably responsible for preventing the most music and movie piracy through their iTunes store. But for their consumer-friendly and controlled distribution model, more people would have pirated.
So to your point, the restrictions are needed to maintain that control; but they shouldn't be so restrictive as to be unfriendly towards consumers. In this digital world, we have to look at piracy as competition to beat. Take apps for example: I have thought about pirating an app for my iPhone, but then I just clicked the buy button because it was the path of least resistance: $3 of resistance vs my time and effort to jailbreak and find pirated material). Back in 2002 with music, the equation was different: $15 for a CD containing the songs I want plus time ripping it (assuming the songs I want are available on one CD) vs. my time to find the pirated material.
TV for my family.