The people who actually produce media (actors, writers, production crew) rarely if ever see fair compensation or residuals for their work.

And in your utopia there would be zero compensation because the project would never be started in the first place.

The only people you're stealing from are the people who already stole the value that the actual creators generated, i.e. the studio.

What? How does a studio steal the value that they created...?

This logic doesn't hold with smaller and/or independent projects

No one mentioned anything about "small projects". Tell me which of these small projects are not allowed to be pirated?

Your point about compensation doesn't even have a completely factual basis. Numerous scientific and medical advancements throughout history have been produced without compensation

Because they have fucking day jobs that allow them the freedom to do that. Day jobs where they're paid to do the same kind of work professionally and are able to dedicate the time to develop the skills and experience necessary to develop these side projects...