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Linus Tech Tips uploaded a video showing how to block ads on Youtube. Which was removed by Youtube for community guidelines violations.
(sh.itjust.works)
https://files.catbox.moe/a6111d.png / https://nitter.poast.org/LinusTech/status/1825956050685800834
If you go the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsjHMzGl-VY. You will see it's gone. So Youtube being Youtube.
Here's a Odysee mirror of the video, https://odysee.com/@jopec:7/linus-tech-tips-degoogle-your-life-part-2-adfree-youtube:0.
...So, you skip the ads using an external program, which prevents the youtube channel you're watching from getting their money.
That's the part that makes it piracy. Of course you have the right to do this, I have no ethical problem with it, i'm doing it now, but you have to understand that when you're doing this you're preventing the youtube channels you're watching from getting paid, you're taking their content without paying them what they asked for in return.
If the youtube channel disables the ads themselves, that's one thing, but you not watching those ads is not what the youtube channels want... because that's how they get paid. Getting free content without paying the content maker is... piracy.
It's like a free booth that offers products and says donations welcome. It legally is not stealing if you take a free product and don't give a donation. The enrichment of the creator legally has nothing to do with whether skipping ads is piracy. The creator has the option to stop offering their content for free in the future if they don't like the money they're getting from the amount of people watching the ads.
...except that's violating youtubes terms of service, and skipping paying the content creators.
Which makes it for all intents and purposes piracy.
A restaurant has a sign that says "no shirt no shoes no service". I walk in barefoot and order a burger. They serve me the burger. They had the right to deny me but they served me anyway. The responsibly to enforce their own terms of service is on them. Similarly youtube has the right to deny service to people blocking ads and sometimes does. That does not make ad blocking piracy for all intents and purposes. The onus to enforce their own terms of service is on them. And it would be very easy for them to take more drastic measures but they don't.
I get that you're trying to make an argument that morally it can feel like piracy, but it's just not actually piracy. No copyright was violated. Youtube's TOS doesn't change that.
It's actually not easy for them to take more drastic measures, and they're actively working on enforcing it.
The part where the content creator doesn't get paid and is supposed to according to the rules of the platform that you're violating is the part where it's piracy.