Also good for composting and making room in your recycling bin
I think there’s a way to reconcile it, but it requires people to behave themselves. It can still be under a CC license, but also behind a pay link for the author. Yes, we could get it from somewhere for free, but that takes more effort and we’re not supporting the original creator.
This is basically mutual aid applied to non-physical goods. We know you still need to make a living in capitalism, and we’ll agree to exchange useful things for money under that system until we have a better one.
There’s also an argument similar to the one for streaming services (the one the services themselves have forgotten in the last few years). Yes, we can pirate it, but that takes effort, the sites involved have all sorts of shady advertisements and try to infect your computer with Windows XP viruses, and we can get all we want and more for ten bucks a month.