Disclaimer:

This post does not condone, encourage, or promote any activities that are illegal in your jurisdiction. And I do not engage in any activities that are illegal under my own jurisdiction.

I've been thinking about this for a while now: is it even ethical to pay companies like Netflix when they are going to use that cash flow to directly and uselessly harm and abuse their users?

Because there is no doubt that DRM is useless to protect against piracy. Just go to https://thepiratebay.org/ and look up any piece of DRM-burdened media ever produced since the 80s to a day ago. Chances are, you are going to find it as a nice downloadable torrent.

Piracy Gives You More Rights

99.9999% of the time, piracy will give you more rights than paying for the content. Has Apple TV ever let you download MKV files of the movies that you paid for? No. Will they ever? Also probably no. Instead, they force you to watch YOUR content the way THEY want you to watch it,
because you’re not actually buying the content you’re just buying a license to access it under strict conditions.
Even if you are trying to do a basic thing like watching the content that you paid for on the video player of your choosing, paying for the content strips that right away from you, while pirating it for free restores that right.

Or if you, say, want to commit the horrible crime of archiving your content on long-lasting media like a Blu-ray or a DVD, well then you are out of luck.
Instead, if you get that same exact content from sailing the high seas, you'd be able to pop that little guy right into K3b and burn away.

Piracy Gives You More Privacy

Almost every service that provides you with even paid, DRM-burdened media will double dip abuse and sell your data to advertisers. So not only do you give them money to abuse your rights, you get a 2-for-1 special and also get your privacy violated! Is that not a great deal?

Instead, you can watch that nice MKV file that fell off that pirate ship whenever you wish without anyone having to know about it.

No One Can Take Your Content Away From You

It has happened thousands of times. Apple TV, Prime Video, Kindle, Disney+, they all have taken your content that you paid for away from you without a refund because of "licensing issues," low popularity, or for "any reason or no reason," as their Terms of Service usually state.

Instead, piracy restores your basic right to have access to your content. As I mentioned before, you can burn your "ARR"-rated movies to an M-Disk Blu-ray and keep it virtually forever.

I believe it to be unethical to vote with your wallet and give money to companies that directly harm your freedom and privacy.