At least for media, piracy websites have a more extensive catalogue (of course) but they also have better privacy which is crazy. And they also allow you to use ad blockers. Sites you pay for would still show ads sometimes and don’t even allow VPNs.
At that point there is no point on paying for streaming and if you wanted to support the creators you could do it separetely with merch, other proyects they have or direct donations if any of those are aviable.
This. Early 2000s pirating was harder and less convenient (no arr stack, no plex/jellyfin) but buying a bunch of dvd’s/cd’s was a lot more expensive, if they even were available, and personally I was pretty broke.
Then streaming came along. It was dope, for a good price you could get good enough quality and quantity, of both music and shows/movies. I stopped pirating.
When I was up to 3 or 4 video streaming services it hit me — I’m paying 40/50 a month, and I STILL don’t have everything I want to watch? This is bullshit.
Went back to pirating, now with all the new software sometimes I’ll download stuff that I have available elsewhere just because it’s all nicely integrated in my setup.
Still don’t pirate music, since music streaming is still convenient — 1 service, pretty much all the music.