And even if I was swimming in money, it's often easier to just download the shows I want and watch them on Plex/Jellyfin than trying to navigate the (often ad-riddled) interfaces of the various platforms and finding where the content I want is.
One example is Rick and Morty, it's made by Adult Swim, but they don't have a streaming service in Canada. It seems to be on Primevideo but under a different system than their regular content. The other way to watch it is to buy it from my cable provider (I don't have cable). So to watch a 20-minutes animated show I'd have to take a +40$ subscription.
Also, I don't quite know my feelings on this yet, but there is something real about some shows and movies being part of the milieu. Something doesn't sit quite right about repeatedly increasing the pricing via anti-consumer acquisitions on products that are contributing a substantial part of how the society collectively feels and thinks. It feels like you have to make more money to live in the same society.
> that are contributing a substantial part of how the society collectively feels and thinks
First of all, I straight-up don't believe this. I had very little exposure to TV/movies/books/the internet growing up, and yet I feel virtually no disconnect with my friends and co-workers - even when I don't understand a particular cultural reference they make, they either explain it and we engage in a fun tangent about it, or we just laugh and move on.
Second, even if that were true - then the problem is that culture is being built off of copyrighted works in the first place. Solve that. Doing otherwise shows that this is just a convenient excuse to secure access to personal entertainment.
Depends on the country, actually. In Poland, as in some other European countries, it's legal to download copyrighted content without paying for it. It's only illegal to distribute it without the copyright owner's permission.