They do already.

What would you call taking or using something without paying for it, then? Resources are still being spent to transport the person who has not paid for them.

I don’t get this logic at all. Piracy doesn’t take away a possible purchase. There is an assumption that the media downloaded was ever going to be paid for. In 100% of the cases where I downloaded pirated content, I was never going to pay for the product, even if it was available to me by other means. Further I cannot remove a sale from someone when I never possessed the money to pay for it anyway.

I believe most people that pirate cannot afford to buy digital releases or pay for streaming services etc… (not all cases of course). In these situations nobody loses. The media companies didn’t lose anything because I was never going to buy it, and it wasn’t stolen because they still possess the media.

Edit - I agree with you Lmaydev I replied to the wrong comment.

The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.

And media costs money to make.

If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.

If you weren't going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That's the thing, if you're interested enough in a product to want it, then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.

If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.

How do you think scene groups get their materials in the first place? They just find it on a flash drive on a park bench?

More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do. The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.

Ever heard of "ripping" a disk, a stream, or a download? Movies, series, and video games get paid for by someone who then proceeds to make unauthorized copies, they very rarely come from anyone at the studio.

Lost sales are "legal" damages, which doesn't mean they're actual loss of anything, since people who were not going to pay, are worth exactly $0.

It's different when bootleg copies get sold, since then there is an actual payment that isn't going to the right person.

Many scene groups actually purchased the games and cracked them, I've read NFOs that say "buy the game, we did too".

People recording in movie theatres have to either sneak into the theatre or buy a ticket themselves.

Someone scanning a book to post online had to have bought it or borrowed it.

Yes some games are cracks of illegitimate obtained leaked copies or other unscrupulous methods.

I have played pirated games in the past but my Steam library has thousands of dollars worth of games I bought, many of which I wouldn't have if I weren't interested in these type of games to begin had pirating games not been possible.

Sure, the opportunity cost from piracy's "lost sales" to the publisher/licensor is non-zero. But how many sales that would have happened varies greatly on the perceived value vs. price of the product, and how available it is. If it's not in stores anymore and can only be bought from scalpers on eBay, the publisher cough Nintendo cough doesn't see that money anyway vs. pirating it.