Imagine you were visiting a free art exhibition and someone was constantly shouting "BUY THIS PURSE BUY IT NOW!" into your ears. Probably a bad analogy but maybe you get my mindset.
If you cannot sell your product, well, maybe it is not worth running after profit. If you do not feel like sharing it for free, maybe someone else will.
I do not consider anything with advertisements (or "submit your mail adresse to get the download link") to be free. The ad publisher is getting my attention, personal data or whatever, it is not free of drawbacks for me.
Disabling parts of an application can hardly be considered piracy.
You say that you don't "consider anything with advertisements (or "submit your mail adresse to get the download link") to be free", so you consider your agreeing to these things to be your payment for the software/service/whatever, right? If so, by not viewing the ads, giving your email, etc, you're not paying the price for the product and are thus pirating it.
You use a service that charges your credit card when you use it, but you realize that you can block the call to the server that does the charging and use it just fine. Is that acceptable? It's technologically equivalent to ad blocking in reverse and blocks payment; the only difference is that the currency is USD or EUR rather than eyeballs.
If you cannot sell your product, well, maybe it is not worth running after profit. If you do not feel like sharing it for free, maybe someone else will.
I do not consider anything with advertisements (or "submit your mail adresse to get the download link") to be free. The ad publisher is getting my attention, personal data or whatever, it is not free of drawbacks for me.
Disabling parts of an application can hardly be considered piracy.