"Badgerpaws, I think you'll find that reliable copies used for file sharing are ripped from an actual purchase, where else do you think the original file comes from."
Whether or not there is an original copy is pretty irrelevant.
With eBay there is one original copy and when a person sells that he gives it up and passes it on to someone else. There remains one item for which the producer has been compensated and one person at a time owns it, the same as selling any item 2nd hand.
With file sharing there may or may not be an original copy but from that potentially thousands of other copies are made, and from those copies in turn, so tens of thousands of people may simultaneously own the thing for which the producer may have been compensated once.
For file sharing to even attempt to be morally the same as eBay then once one person has downloaded the file from the current owners machine they should prevent further downloads and destroy all of their copies of the file.
"Mayorquimby, if the US series makers don't want to reduce the value of their programmes to foreign markets then maybe they should think about releasing them at the same time as they are released in the US."
Arranging a simultaneous release of a product all over the world is actually reasonably tricky unless you are a massive relatively independent company like Lucasfilm who can manage to force such a thing through.
Otherwise you're dependant on some other company for financing and you dance to their tune to an extent. So the company paying for it might very well want to show it in one country first so as to demonstrate how popular it could be and to therefore be in a position to argue for the best value for the product overseas.
Of course there's nothing to force a company to do that, they could easily just fund it themselves and release it as and when they want. Only they want have so high a budget, and so many of those shows that we all claim to "love" wouldn't get made.
So there are financial and logistical reasons for why global releases are staggered, and that's not even looking at the issue of translating TV shows.
However in the end isn't it up to the makers and funders of a show to release something how and when they wish?
What gives anyone the right to fundamentally say "if you don't release your product how I want, when I want and at a price I want then I'm going to steal it."
Would anyone walk up to a sports car show room and say "if you don't drop the price of your car then I'm justified in stealing it."
Of course not.
"File sharing is the same as eBay" and "it's the producers fault for not releasing it exactly when I want it" are just excuses that people use to justify stealing from, and therefore hurting, the people that make the product that they claim to "love".