There's nothing hypothetical about what people would do in a world of easy piracy because we live in a world of easy piracy, and artists get paid. Good artists get paid quite a bit. And where the rights-restrictive "pay-for-play" model doesn't really work - painting, sculpture, etc - there's public funding of the arts.
We don't live in a world where people can go to the movie theater to see LW 17 on the big screen without some segment of the MPAA getting their cut. There is no evidence that substantial number of theaters would elect to pay out some of their ticket proceeds to the movie studios if they did not have to do so.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
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