I also have doubts about whether piracy is actually a problem. Take a look at the gaming industry for example. This year the game The Witcher 3 was released without a DRM system in place. This means that not even a crack was necessary to properly pirate the game, copy/paste does the trick. Yet they sold over 6 million copies at $65 a piece. That’s 390 million USD.
There are two big falacies in the discussion about piracy. One is that people always pick the cheapest option, i.e. they pirate when they can. The above example (and many others) indicates that that’s not true. Quality of service seems to be the big factor here. If an industry suffers from piracy, that’s an indication that their quality of service is really bad. The PC gaming industry got over this through high quality services like Steam and GMG.
The second falacy is that a pirated copy equals a lost sale. That this is false is made obvious by the concept of price elasticity of demand. With exception of products that their derive their (status) value from their high price, it is ridiculous to assume that (all other factors being equal) demand for a product with a price tag would be as high as demand for that product for free. Considering price elasticity of demand, it is not unlikely that demand from pirates mostly evaporates if piracy would be eliminated.
All this considered, I think many artists screaming about not being able to make a living because of piracy are simply unwilling to face an inconvenient truth: There’s not enough demand for your art because it is simply not good enough. That, or your industry suffers from a service problem. The latter can be solved by using SAFE without requiring a PtP mechanism.