When I was a poor student I pirated everything. Music, software, games, you name it.

Now that I have a good stable income, I pay for the things I want because I want to encourage artists and developers. But corporations and capitalism are ruining it all.

So, I’m changing my habits. Paying money where it actually has a significant impact on the creators, (like going to live concerts and shows, buying albums directly from the artist or from their own site, buying indie games from small studios, going to watch movies from studios that respect their employees and artists and unions) and pirating the ever loving shit out of everything else coming out of a large corporation.

Was a student, couldn’t afford CDs.

Nowadays I

1. don’t want to subscribe to too many streaming services, each just having a few things I want to watch. Also I broke my neck and I’m now on disability, there’s no budget to waste, at all.
2. Like to watch old shows and “rare” movies that aren’t available anywhere.

I paid over $1k about 10 years ago for music software. My computer killed itself, so I made a new one and redownloaded the software…but the company said I’m an imposter. After years of fighting with them, they refused to activate my paid software despite proving my identity and showing proof of purchase. I didn’t choose to pirate, the system chose for me

First time, it was because I was a kid that couldn’t pay for the movies/music/games I wanted. The high seas provided me with a solution for that.

Then I started making money and Netflix streaming came along making it both cheap and convenient. I docked my ship and forgot about my pirate life for a long time. Everything was good, living a quiet life…

But then the corporate greed caught up and ruined everything. Streaming prices became absurd, content got fragmented to way too many services and they fucking started introducing ads.

So here I am, setting sail once again. I didn’t need or want this, but they have forced my hand with their infinite greed.

Napster was a godsend, as I couldn’t afford to buy music. I installed it on the school computers, and I had a sneaky little hidden folder with my mp3s. I’d plug in my headphones and listen over lunchtime. I eventually figured out how to use multipart rar files to put them onto floppy disks, so that I could get them back home and listen on my parent’s computer. I was eventually able to buy a portable CD player that played mp3s on CD-RW, which really opened up the possibilities. Without piracy, I don’t think I would be into music in the same way - I simple never would have had the opportunity to listen to most stuff.

Young and didn’t have any money. Certainly not enough to blow on movies or shows. Since then it’s been a jumping off point into learning more and more about computers. Networks, data transfer, Linux, virtual machines. I’m looking to get some certifications and get into IT now, and I probably wouldn’t have the knowledge to do so if I hadn’t spent my years on the high seas.

My dad got into Kazaa in the mid-00s, then Limewire, before discovering Mininova and TPB. Just kinda saw what he was doing and thought it was interesting. (We were often told not to touch the computer as it’d “knock off his download”…)

I seem to recall one of the first things I pirated was… er, Pirates of the Caribbean, which I watched with my friends huddled round my laptop. Quality times.

My uncle hooked me up with an R4 for my DS and 3DS.
The first software I remember pirating was Cinema4D.
I started my own media library with Jellyfin due to the increased fragmentation and price increases. Earlier I co-payed a netflix account with my friend.

But I still pay for my Spotify Account.

Gronk found fire. Gronk thought good idea. Gronk shared idea. Fire never belonged to Gronk. Idea never belonged to Gronk.

I wanted to buy music, but a CD that I got in the 00’s had some “protection” so that I couldn’t rip it and listen to it on my MP3 player.

Now, I ripped it from a Linux computer and had no problems, but was so upset that the record companies tried this. I realized that it’s not about right or wrong, but just about power and money.

My mom showed me what Limewire was when I was a kid. She didn’t know what piracy was.

I was in middle school and I saw my friend had all the episodes of ATHF (aqua teen hunger force) and I wanted to be able to get free episodes of stuff. Silly but true.

You can therefore blame the mooninites for my piracy.

Ideology. every cent a capitalist doesn’t make because of me is a small victory.

Intellectual property is the lamest form of property put forth by the propertarians.

My parents were the ones who pointed me to the high seas. I was a kid (12-13yo) when Napster came out. Being the family geek, they told me to look into it since they heard about it on the news and wanted free music (early case of the Streissand Effect before it was termed as such). So I did. And we got free music. Even asked them to get me a CD burner for my birthday after that and they did.

As a kid on the earlier days of the Internet, I came across all sorts of ways to get free stuff. Games and Music at first, especially game cracks/warez. Then once torrents came on the scene, movies and shows.

I actually don’t pirate much anymore. Rarely pirate music since I’ve had Spotify for like 10+yrs now. Same with games since Steam and all the other digital storefronts have so many sales. I still pirate emulator ROMs once in a blue moon. Movies/shows would be where I pirate the most (though like once a month if that), even though I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll. Even between those 4, I can’t find everything I want to watch.

But yeah, 99% of the time, I just don’t want to pay for things. The other 1% is that I can’t pay for something (mainly in the emulators/ROMs space). That’s all.