In regards to cards and identities stolen. I'd recommend doing due diligence in making sure any company that one purchases a good or service from is legit. There are also payment companies like PayPal that you can use as a shield to not give out your card info. Ultimately if someone is concerned with being linked to a streaming edit, they simply shouldnt do it.
Again, the rule says nothing about buying a tool. It says that you can't torrent. I just simply pointed out, not speaking as staff, that there are no free options for producing the highest quality sources. Screen captures are most often pretty trashy looking and would struggle to meet IFDB standards of quality, imo. So, those janky pirate programs that you refer to are most likely going to be necessary to obtain the source at the highest quality possible.
Using a decryption tool is implied if you aren't allowed to download from pirates (not sure if you're making a distinction between torrent and non-torrent downloads, but the admins would have no way of distinguishing what method was used since the files would be identical).
There are two types of tools, decryption tools that work on the files - which you're talking about, which are only available for certain services, such as the old iTunes version one you said you use. These are safe-ish if the program isn't trojaned and you protect your payment methods as you said. Any screen capture tools would be the same as this, plus the quality issues that basically make them a nonstarter.
The other type of tools, used for downloads from Amazon, Netflix, etc actually logs into your account itself and decrypts the stream, you give the tool your account credentials to facilitate the download. This is the type I was talking about in regards to stolen accounts and identities.
There's a free way to do Amazon file decryption supposedly, but I'm more technically adept than 99% of people and I spent the better part of a day trying to figure out the proper key inputs without success. I just wanted to save a TV show I had purchased to my library as normal mp4s.
So it's a catch-22 if downloads are forbidden - the safe tools are too difficult for most people to figure out, the buyable local decryption tools are sketchy, and the streaming decryption you'll need for most content is downright dangerous and shouldn't even be considered.
And none of it actually benefits the content creators, which was the whole point of the physical media rule about obtaining sources yourself. It just prevents people from making edits and possibly endangers them if they aren't security conscious, which most people aren't (or don't know enough about the dangers to protect themselves).