I don't condone it because it is leeching off of other's work without paying them. However, from what my time looking at the lost media wiki has shown me, an unintended side-effect of piracy is its ability to preserve shows and other media on the internet when companies try to pull a 1984 and scrub their existence from society.
Because like a lot media companies, they got greedy and thought they could paywall their content and force a lot people to pay to see their shows. The initial benefit of Netflix and Hulu was that you could see a lot of old and new content from different companies in one place, whenever you wanted. When companies started removing their stuff and putting in their own streaming services, they basically undermined the whole point of streaming, and just reinvented cable.