read OP’s post. if it not were for privacy in the first place and people ripping media, there wouldn’t be any copy left of those shows.
Of course not all pirates archive, but there’s an important percentage that do. Non-pirates are running out of options because each year less and less audiovisual productions release as physical media (old DVDs, more recently blue rays) and are only available through a subscription model where you do not own the actual content.
So piracy is pretty much the only route available to archive a lot of content.