I interpreted the article to be about showing the contrast the two perceptions and show how wildly different they could be, rather than to shit on the startups.
Like you said, there are the warm fuzzies too. But thats covered very well by more mainstream-ish sources, so it wouldn't be worth reiterating those.
The problem is calling the negative story "reality". It would have been better to just call them positive/negative and avoid attributing all these startup's success to bad things.
I'm concerned that some of your sources are 3.5 years old. Piracy is bound to happen with UGC websites, what really matters is how those sites react. Those sites you listed have done a fairly decent job fending off the illegal content by ways of both manual and automated removal of copyrighted content.
Also you stated the following, linking the source for evidence:
"The reality paints a different picture, of pirated content driving the lion’s share of pageviews, while other original content is left in the dust"
However nowhere in the TC article mentions pageviews, or the percentage of pageviews broken down by legitimate/illegitimate content.
While many of the comments so far can be summarized as knee-jerk reactions; if desired, so can the original post.
Does anyone have actual numbers on the overall message therein? How much traffic is actually driven by would-be pirates? Clearly, it would appear by all accounts; the number is large. Can we get some facts?
This is so simplistic. At the very least, both the warm fuzzies and the sketchy activity could be happening at the same time.