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.
Yes exactly and I always consider Steam (and to a lesser degree the Kindle ecosystem), which make it obvious to me that interoperability and convenience are something consumers are willing to pay for.
Yeah, I have never pirated a game because of steam. My dad taught me about bearshare, limewire, and others from his time for music but I pay, unfortunately for YouTube, get new music from indie artists. It’s so easy to just listen to anything I want. Netflix was the same way. Hell now places are uploading to YouTube for old stuff kike all of myth busters.