A UK study on piracy, conducted by Entertainment Media Research, reveals that one third of Brits have downloaded pirated content from the Internet (nothing strange here), and that most of them are doing it simply because the legal methods of purchasing content are lacking compared to pirate sources.
I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again: so called "pirates" are actually doing a very good job at categorizing, organizing and presenting content; furthermore, their content is always DRM-free, and even though you sometimes have to bother with cracks and serials, it's still better (and not only cheaper) than the "real" thing.
Now, open the study linked above and switch to page 209. 70% of users claim that "legal d/l sites don't have the range of illegal ones;" 68% claim that with piracy they "can get what they want a lot faster compared to legal sites;" but (very important) they "would pay for legal d/ls if they had what they wanted."
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So, as an example, when a popular, legal site like Pandora goes down the drain because they can't get a legal license to serve music for listeners outside of the US, where do you think the users are going to turn? Or, when you're forced to use a particular piece of software in order to transfer music to your portable audio device, where are you going to go if you want to use something else? Choices, choices.