Ultimately we have to live somewhere in the physical world, and facing large fines or imprisonment is unattractive. The real surprise to me is that hard-line intellectual property protection has remained the political status-quo throughout the world. You'd think there'd be at least one or two countries willing to try alternatives, and give sites like Pirate Bay a place to operate in peace.
Edit: Legalize Marijuana, vote the likes of Trump into power, leave the EU, threaten to nuke the US, fine, but some things, like intellectual property, are sacred.
One reason is that journalists influence public opinion and thus their opinion carries weight with the average politician. Journalists often pretty strongly support copyright because they need it in order to earn a salary.
Legalizing Marijuana is more important than copyright? I disagree. Copyright is about how we handle our cultural heritage and how we compensate those who produce those artifacts. To me that is a way more important topic than the war on drugs.
Journalists and newspapers as we know them today are deathly afraid of becoming obsolete, which they in many ways already are. What they're doing now with ads and paywalls is just delaying their extinction for a bit. I doubt you will find many journalists in favor of copyright law vitiation. Or writers in general, musicians, etc.
Edit: Legalize Marijuana, vote the likes of Trump into power, leave the EU, threaten to nuke the US, fine, but some things, like intellectual property, are sacred.