> One could even argue that it is pro consumer
One really couldn't. It punishes buyers with encumbered software while merely delaying pirates a short while. Pirates end up with the better experience, so...
you might be surprised at how obscure torrents have become outside of tech circles. when I graduated college (2017), basically no one outside of the comp sci department understood how to use torrents (or even knew what they were). this would have been unthinkable when I was in high school. everyone and their mother seemed to be torrenting music and movies.
I even tried explaining how to use them to people, but they would object that the school would catch them anyway. when I explained how VPNs work, they complained that $6/month was too expensive for a poor college student. nevermind that they're already paying for prime, netflix, and hulu subscriptions every month.
I think there are two main reasons for this. a lot of people have laptops with the base storage option, often a 256GB or even 128GB ssd. phones have even less storage. this makes it unappealing to keep a local library of music and especially movies (plus now that everyone has a phone and a laptop, syncing your collection becomes annoying). second, I think video and especially music streaming services have actually succeeded in making their products just convenient enough that people don't feel like figuring out how to use torrent trackers and clients.
Blocked in Europe, China, Australia, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_T...
exaggerating slightly but you know what I mean
The base knowledge here is people who know how to install and play pretty complex games. These people go to impossible lengths to install video drivers and troubleshoot problems with their computers; I'm sure they won't find this particular task very difficult.