It's about what the market will bear. If the content owners would offer it to us at a fair price, people wouldn't bootleg it.
For instance, me personally:
I WILL pay to see a movie in a theater, and I very rarely download feature films mostly because I don't have an urge to own a copy - paid or free.
I WILL pay Netflix $22/mo (or whatever it is this month) for service that includes all I can stream to multiple devices in my home.
I WILL NOT pay Charter $150/mo for the level of service that's required to get HBO, Lifetime, FX, etc just so I can watch 12 episodes a year of the four or five series that are worth watching. Therefore, I WILL bittorrent bootleg copies of Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, etc that are often superior to the level of service I get from my own cable company. (And the wife gets whatever she wants to make her happy; "You want all five seasons of Boardwalk Empire, sweetie? No problem, you'll be watching the first episode in half an hour.") Offer me a cafeteria plan, and you'll get paid what the content's worth.
Furthermore, if they can't be bothered to supply me with reliable equipment and/or a signal level that won't befuddle said equipment, then I won't have to download programs that I had intended to DVR, but your POS set top box got confused because I tried to tune it to channel 4 so now I have to bootleg that, too.
Finally, I WILL pay $250 once a season for a pair of tickets to see my favorite NFL team play against my hometown team, plus spend money at your concessions. It's a whole day's entertainment and the experience of a live game is worth it, even if I have to put up with asshole Chargers fans.
But I WILL NOT pay the $400 per season that DirecTV and NFL conspire to charge me to watch live games if I am a fan who lives outside of a team's primary market area. Therefore, I WILL watch bootleg live streams even if they are only 175kbps 12fps lagfests rather than be extorted by corporations. Offer me an option to subscribe to one team's games and I might pay $100 a season, maybe even $150. Offer me a standalone VOIP option at an affordable price and you'll get paid what the content's worth.
Otherwise, I have other options. And I always will. Even if it's paying nothing and viewing nothing.