Just think for a second about the hyperbole involved in even calling it piracy. Piracy implies not only theft, which isn't applicable since there is no deprivation, but the pillage of a vessel on the high seas, and the kidnapping (and possibly enslavement, slaughter, rape, or drowning) of its crew.

I think that this (and a whole system of) hyperbole has made it impossible to even talk about it. The MPAA and other similar organizations clutch to legalism, in my opinion, at the cost of revenues to rights holders.

On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues. If rights holders would standardize licensing, and allow a wide variety of distributors to make consuming their content more convenient and a better experience than torrenting, then their revenues would recover; and since there are more people willing and able to pay for a service like this today than when the recording industries came to be, revenue per head can be lower while still funding better content than ever.

Added: Another working model is paid DRM-free downloads. I only buy music in open and lossless formats, which in practice means Bandcamp, a few independent online publishers (like Hospital Records), and CDs. I pay for it because I don't want to feel used while listening to music, and I don't want to rely on ongoing permission to listen to something I've paid for explicitly. This is a different stage of the on-demand/streaming userbase, when they want to have a copy of a record which lasts longer than Spotify Inc.