Piracy is a service problem.

I only pirate because it is more convenient than any alternative.

The best example I experienced was when I tried to watch an apple tv original show with my cousin (who has family access to the service). He wanted to log in to his account on my laptop and needed to verify his dad's credit card to do so. No problem, but it took a while. After that we still couldn't watch, because the player didn't load the video for some reason. Cue my cousin fiddling about trying to fix the issue.

In the meantime I had started to download the first two episodes and copied it on a thumb drive.

Some of the best piracy options might cost you.. Drebid, Usenet, Private Indexers, Seedboxes. They all cost money to varying degrees.

Hell if I'm being honest with myself, I've sunk way more into piracy than I probably would have spent just paying for a streaming service. What with building my server and buying extra hard drives, buying blocks of data, paying for API access. That stuff can add up. I know I could do free alternatives, but I really like how I have things set up now, and I love building my media collection and sharing it with my friends and family.

I pirate movie, tv and music and pay for seedbox and spotify.

Whats your point?

idk, a debrid service is so cheap, it costs less to pay than to buy the hard drives and server + power. And it has pretty much everything already, so it's more convenient, too.

It's hard to justify dropping a pile of cash on 3 drives for a RAID when it will take about a decade to pay for itself vs. debrid, by which point I'll need to replace the drives. Plus, it takes more time to set up, maintain, and load the desired media.

I'm going to chime in with what I think. I've been sailing the seas for a while now. And at the end of the day I am all for people doing whatever the fuck they want. Want to pay for streaming? Fine. Want to digitize you library of blurays, cassettes, dvd. etc..? Go for it. Want to share everything you have? Cool. Want to be a bootlicker? Fine, I guess. Want to hit n run every torrent you every come across? You a bitch, but I mean there isn't anything really stopping you. Luckily, certain communities have ways to weed out people that don't share similar values (whatever they may be). I am part of a thriving one. I am more of the belief that all media should be available to everyone forever. That's all I'ma say about that, and at the end of the day I know of the issues with this sort of thinking, but I am not gonna elaborate nor argue with anyone about anything.

At the end of the day people will do what they want (for the most part). With regards to the larger idea of paying for content, that is gonna be done in one way or another depending on what you do. You never want to pirate? That's fine you'll just have to pay for internet and whatever streaming services you want. You also run the risk on never again being able to access certain shows, movies for a variety of reasons (licensing issues, because companies can just pull the "fuck you" card, etc). As for pirating, the cost of this is always going to depend on what you want to do and how long. The minimum you will need is a HDD/drive to download your shit, internet, and then a player to play said shit (TV, android box, etc..). If you want to do more you'll have to pay or have available a computer that will host your shit (old computer, NAS, etc). If you have a robust collection or are digitizing your movies/shows, once again you are gonna need drives. You can get an external drive or invest in those huge drives (20+TB) to get more bang for your buck, but they also aren't pocket change to throw around. Luckily drives are always getting cheaper, but know that they don't last forever and they aren't always super cheap depending on how big you want them. As for services to stream your shit to your devices, there are plenty of free and paid things to make that happen.

There are also tools/services that I pay for that have made obtaining content much easier, but by no means are they necessary to eventually get the media. I'm not gonna lie, it does seem a little ironic that I have had to pay to do/obtain the things I have, but I do not regret it at all. These tool and services allow me to have the my current collection and allowed me to do it quickly for the most part. I am part of a community that is thriving and passionate about what they care about with regards to media. I am not going to go into the whole, "is it moral?", or "where does piracy stand?" argument cause at the end of the day I don't give a fuck nor am i going to try and moralize piracy or whatever . People can do that till the cows come home and feel any which way they want. Not my business and has no bearing on what I am doing.

Back to the point of money and piracy, like I said, one "pays" for media in one way or another. Some forms are cheaper, others are more convenient, and some choices are maybe even both. At the end of the day, from how I see things, most thing are never going to be truly free. It is going to boil down to what you care about doing, how fast you want something, how long you want said thing, maintenance, convenience, and finally, money. While you don't need much money to start pirating there is a bare minimum of required things. Yes, you can acquire them for free if someone gives them (computer, phone, etc..) to you but there are people that don't even have that. Someone that is destitute (by this i mean someone that literally has nothing, no home, no phone, no computer) will not be able to pirate. Then there's the internet issue which some people may or may not have regular access to nor have reliability.

Money will always be tied to piracy in one way or another. Depending on who you ask there will be different answers. It varies widely on how you view piracy and what you view as money spent towards it. They money I have spent on drives alone and my NAS compare to years of a subscription to multiple streaming services. Money is part of the equation on any side you take, whether straight laced or eye-patched.

No paid media streaming service could ever topple an automated Jellyfin server. Who wants to scroll through pages of dogshit content just to find something decent to watch?

It's like leasing warehouses to store all our treasures.

These days pirates do not use islands to bury treasures.

"Pirates".

The only streaming service I've ever paid for was vrv/seeso because I would comit violent crimes to get another season of HarmonQuest or the My Brother, My Brother, and Me TV show.