My entertainment experience is so much better than my friends’ because of piracy. I use torrents, and store my media and it’s made my life so great since I got into this a little over a year ago. I’ve seen shows that none of my friends have seen. Lately I’ve been into police dramas and there’s an incredible series from France called Le Bureau des Légendes, which is phenomenal. There’s one from the UK that I just finished called Line of Duty that was also great. I saw an Estonian period film that is entertaining called Apteeker Melchior – it was freeleech for a short while, so I grabbed it.
My friends who pay for Netflix, Disney+ and all the the other streaming channels watch the all same garbage TV. I can see that too, but I get access to these other amazing films and shows. I’ve not even mentioned the books, audiobooks and music.
The pirate’s life is a great life and it’s the life for me. Arrrr.
There will always be the hoarders. You can’t collect everything on any sort of wage/salary and live. If you have a compulsion then piracy is a reasonably harmless past time. You aren’t depriving anyone of income for something no normal person could reasonable afford.
For regular content consumers it is simply free market economics working. Companies innovate and offer great products and value and they take people away from the black market. Then the companies get greedy, form loose deniable cartels and start fixing prices prices at higher levels and cutting quality and consumers go elsewhere. They want the profits from a free market but don’t want to play the game and compete on value and quality. Sucks for them. The government grants them a legal monopoly on monetizing their IP but it doesn’t give them a clue on how to build successful businesses.