You have probably misunderstood. There are 4 parties here:
A) the content creator, owner of the IP
B) the people that copy the content made by A and publish it (i.e. the "release groups"). They can distirbute the content over bittorrent, sharing sites etc
C) people that run platforms that share copies made by B, and they offer access to those copies (sometimes even just a hash to a torrent) with some kind of paid subscription. Their added value is making it easier to access content copied by B.
D) final users, they can choose to consume content from A, B or C.
My point was that D paying for C are... weird, in my opinion.
Edit: technically there is a 5th group, like C but that do it for free, running forums etc at most hosting some banner to pay the hosting cost and not much more.
bmacho
I answered the Hollywood/Netflix part. Distributors, most prominently Apple and Amazon are shitty companies, and paying them is arguably much more unethical than paying "C", even if the latter is illegal.
A) the content creator, owner of the IP
B) the people that copy the content made by A and publish it (i.e. the "release groups"). They can distirbute the content over bittorrent, sharing sites etc
C) people that run platforms that share copies made by B, and they offer access to those copies (sometimes even just a hash to a torrent) with some kind of paid subscription. Their added value is making it easier to access content copied by B.
D) final users, they can choose to consume content from A, B or C.
My point was that D paying for C are... weird, in my opinion.
Edit: technically there is a 5th group, like C but that do it for free, running forums etc at most hosting some banner to pay the hosting cost and not much more.