Image description: a screenshot from the Wikipedia page for the Doctor Who TV series, with a user-added caption that reads "Preserve the media you can before it's gone forever." The Wikipedia article reads, "No 1960s episodes exist on their original videotapes (all surviving prints being film transfers), though some were transferred to film for editing before transmission and exist in their broadcast form. [88] Some episodes have been returned to the BBC from the archives of other countries that bought prints for broadcast or by private individuals who acquired them by various means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have also been retrieved, as well as excerpts filmed from the television screen onto 8 mm cine film and clips that were shown on other programmes. Audio versions of all lost episodes exist from home viewers who made tape recordings of the show. Short clips from every story with the exception of Marco Polo (1964), "Mission to the Unknown" (1965) and The Massacre (1966) also exist."
read OP's post. if it not were for privacy in the first place and people ripping media, there wouldn't be any copy left of those shows.
Of course not all pirates archive, but there's an important percentage that do. Non-pirates are running out of options because each year less and less audiovisual productions release as physical media (old DVDs, more recently blue rays) and are only available through a subscription model where you do not own the actual content.
So piracy is pretty much the only route available to archive a lot of content.
You're right, piracy is often the only way to archive media. Many releases aren't available on BluRay in all regions. It's thanks to those people who go through the trouble and rip media.
I meant to comment above on how not all piracy helps preserve media.