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.
Back in 1983, when my neighbor copied the Monopoly game for me to play on my C64. Cassette drive. Shit took forever to load. Fun af. At that point, the idea of paying seemed ridiculous. Then came the npd bbs era. Aye, matey. 🏴☠️
I remember walking around my neighborhood with a box of floppies going from friend to friend making mass copies of games we had for the c64 (was popular among my friends). We were just sharing, didn’t even think about piracy then. Cracktro’s were just neat things to my tiny brain then, not “we cracked this, you pirated it!”. I really didn’t get that point of it being piracy until I hit a BBS outside of my normal area that had FULL PROGRAMS to d/l for free! Took a month and a day at 300baud but holy crap, that program costs literally over $1000 but there it is in all it’s free glory. That was really my beginning into donning the hat and setting sail.
We were on the same path! I started my own bbs, which eventually got me access to some of the big time bbs clearing houses that had cd towers worth of stuff. They had isdn lines, 28.8 modem banks, etc. I had to do a phone interview with one of them… I think that was “Phantom West” and another one that happened to be in my calling area called “Transfixus Sed Non Mortus”, which eventually got busted. Those Phantom guys actually produced pirated discs and manuals to sell at computer swap meets and to China.
Dogs were off the leash then. Did I need Harvard Graphics? No. Was I downloading it? Yup!
As I grow older and can afford software, apps mostly, I’m ok with throwing a little back to the dev. Can fuck right off with a subscription, however.