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I do agree that it's not something users should be criminalised for (or even necessarily penalised for) - yes, in many cases, it "should be" clear for the user that they're downloading an unauthorised copy, but in the current online world, things can genuinely get confusing very quickly.
When there's an abundance of genuinely free stuff available (software, music, books, videos, many of which are done to professional standards and, if bought in a box / on physical media from a shop, not free at all), when free legal streaming services exist for some media (music/radio), it's not necessarily at all easy for a lot of people to understand or realise which files are legitimately free to download/stream and which are not.
Frankly, I think the only real, working, solution against piracy is making legally buying things as easy and no-jumping-through-hoops-required as possible. If people have to go to considerably more effort to buy something or if they're simply unable to buy something because it's not sold to them (geo-restrictions), the likelihood for basically honest people to pirate goes way up - after all, no one is losing money if you're not even allowed to buy the thing. (Please note: I'm not saying it's an absolute argument that should be taken as a good reason - but it is a reason that is used, and that is hard to argue; the argument here isn't whether content creators lose income, if they refuse to take some people's money, but whether people are entitled or not entitled to something that other people are entitled to just because they live in another country, and that's a whole other issue.)
If there are (reasonably affordable) easy-to-use, legal alternatives available, most basically honest grown-up people who have some entertainment budget will buy instead, I believe. (I say "grown-up people" as many kids will probably always pirate to some extent, both because of lack of money and because of curiosity, but in my experience, most people start buying more and more as they grow older, their ethics mature and they start earning their own income.)
Those people who will pirate anyway, out of personal convictions ("everything is free") or other similar reasons, they will, well, always pirate. It's the basically honest people (and I believe most consumers are) who can and should be won over by offering reasonable legal alternatives instead of threatening them with jail.
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