The companies definitely know. Knowledge levels, insights, and interdiction capabilities vary by company, but every media company knows about boxes like this, and the dude at the gas station who will sell you a thumb drive with movies on it, and the secondary markets for stolen passwords, usenet, kodi, and the hundreds of other ways.

Source: I worked in such a company for a kotra years.

lets be honest though. piracy used to be seen as this super complicated thing hackers did. now that the average grandma has tasted the sweet nectar of free media, nobody is going back. what the State doesn’t want you to know is that if enough people stop complying with laws, then they lose the capability to be able to enforce them. eventually- too many people won’t respect the laws and regardless of the consequences on paper there will be no consequence in practice. there are too few police officers in the united states- even with over policing and mass incarceration what it is, to be able to enforce this.

The market is just going to have to get realistic and realize that you can’t nickle and dime people in the era of mass market, high bandwidth, telecommunications.

Thinking about this…I feel this is more:

“Notice me billion dollar cable. Look I’m tattling, now go bribe a congressman that you’re upset and don’t forget about us once they pass a law”