A dirty secret is that piracy is being abused by criminal organizations[1]. When people unknowingly access such sites to see contents for free, it generate ad revenue for those organizations, which can fund other crimes.
Broadly speaking any organisation facilitating piracy is implicitly a criminal one. Piracy is a pretty large field though and the economics of say a streaming site are going to be very different from running a torrent tracker. The fact you can use a torrent tracker without even visiting the site (Radarr/Sonarr etc) tells me that running a tracker site, probably isn't very lucrative.
> The suspects subscribed to 40 Korean cable TV service accounts, re-broadcasting content to Indonesia and offering video-on-demand (VOD) services through customized TV boxes, applications, and web browsers.
Sure, that is a case, but I mainly wanted to quote INTERPOL (the international police):
> Criminals behind pirate sites can be part of organized crime groups. They can use the proceeds to fund other illegal activities, such as illegal online gambling, online sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and money laundering.
Another notable example would be Operation KRATOS 2 by EUROPOL[1]. The case was roughly the same — crime organization pirating video content. IPTV piracy is certainly a lucrative business, because videos are relatively more difficult to handle for normal people.
Not immediately being a copyright bootlicker.
The fact that you went straight to "BuT pIrAtEs" already shows who you actually care: Corpos, not people.