Kids feeling like outsiders isn't something you can fix by torrenting movies. They always exclude each other for dumb things, and they would even if we lived in some egalitarian paradise.
The problem is you keep making arguments that you then turn around and admit your belief doesn't hinge on. So you say it's not wrong because some people can't afford it...but it's still okay even if they can. Then you say it's not wrong because they might not enjoy the film...but it's still okay even if they do. So, by your own admission, these things are ancillary to the topic.
We have moral reason (fighting cultural exclusion)
and other reasons I listed. Not a single one is the one and only, for me it is a little bit of all.
But he doesn't demand it. And that alone means the two situations are not comparable. Whether or not you take it with their permission, or without it, is the important part.
Right, but it's your opinion that you should be allowed to unilaterally decide whether or not to pay for this stuff.
Again, you're not really replying to the point here: the level of profits directly correlates to the size of the industry. This is easily demonstrated with a thought experiment: if the film industry made $100 a year, total, they wouldn't be able to make many films (or many films with high production values), right? But if they made $10 million, they would make more, and more expensive ones. And if they made $100 million, you'd see even more movies greenlit, and with higher budgets, and riskier films would get made, too.
In all three of these examples, the industry is making "a profit." In two of them, it's making a large profit. But you're getting far more films, with far larger budgets, and a wider variety of films, the higher you go. And the more films made, and the larger their budgets, the more ordinary people the industry sustains, too, since the overwhelming majority of people involved are not superstar actors or studio heads.
You just said "being poor is a gradient." So are profits. Just as your income affects your consumption, movie industry profits affect what gets made, and for how much. There's no big glowing line that says "REALLY RICH" beyond which they stop making more (or bigger, or weirder) films.
This is a straw man. I'm not saying you should be enraged. I'm just saying I don't think these ethical justifications hold water.
With all due respect this is going nowhere, you will not budge and trust me, I will not either. We just have to agree to disagree.