How do these pirates make money? It seems like so much work is/has gone into their operations that it can't just be for karma points.

Edit: I'm referring to the content ripping groups. Apart from the technical and legal challenges depicted in the article, they need to seed their files which (must be) very costly. Also, content is released consistently and extremely quickly.

The common answer is that the motivation is non-monetary: Fun, community service, group pride etc. But I find that hard to believe entirely. The product is just too polished, subjectively resembeing in quality a revenue generating operation rather than a(n illegal) side hobby.