Companies pay big bucks for timed exclusivity though. If reverse timeshifting was legal, movie theaters would go bankrupt. I feel like this wouldn’t hold up.

The difference is that grabbing it pre-FTA is also grabbing a perfect copy. The quality may not matter to many of us, but to some it does. And because it matters to some, major copyright holders have started to treat unlicensed exchanges as “competition” from a business PoV (which is a concession from strictly seeing it as crime). So their business strategy is to compete with the unlicensed channels by offering perfect quality media at a price (they hope) people are willing to pay (also in part to avoid the inconvenience and dodgyness of the black market).

FWiW, that’s their take and it’s why they get extra aggressive when the unlicensed version is perfect.