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Was somewhere teenaged through to uni during the height of Kazaa/LimeWire/etc and then the golden age of torrents (when good private trackers were abound and you could actually expect torrents to be organically seeded for months/years rather than depending on either release groups themselves or one guy with a seedbox). IRC XDCC was still commonplace and Usenet was going strong (as ever).
Everyone in my social circles pirated. Not even just because it was free (which, granted, was a big deal) but because it was cool. The newness of the tech, the sketchiness, all added to the excitement, the glamour. But that's what you get when said social circles were literal children and teenagers, or at least under 30.
Our boomer parents weren't as excited, and weren't in support of it, but the internet was seen as the Wild West, then. Sure they had an little inkling that piracy didn't seem quite legal, but the ones with any computer exposure probably also downloaded a wallpaper or a MSWORD resume template at some point, and that was kind of the same, right? Mentions of piracy didn't trigger too many alarms, as with all things when you proclaimed "I got it from the internet", so long as it wasn't porn or something.
I think more people claim this than actually believe it, if you rule out a fake-it-'till-you-make-it sort of phenomenon. Torrenting, the last and final bastion of casual piracy, had been losing steam for years before Netflix came along. Public and private trackers alike died on the regular, and came back weaker if/when they came back at all (TPB, KAT, etc fell in this category; also, RIP demonoid v1 and v2). Some were surviving better but just weren't getting uploads/seeds (iirc isohunt, torrentz, etc). I have a mishmash of other thoughts and observations about this period, but it's so much deeper into anecdote and speculation territory as to not be worth making sense of.
Likely a rationalization, but this is how I've always dealt with digital media. My capacity to consume and my capacity to spend are limited, but the former outstrips the latter by far. I'm also very particular, and somewhat stingy, at least in the sense of trying to be overly sure a purchase is "optimal" before I pull the trigger. So I'll buy the things I'm actively excited about up front. I'll pirate everything else, and purchase the best of the lot with any remaing funds. As far as I'm concerned, my spending hasn't changed; my money is going where it would have in a magical alternate universe that was identical save for piracy not existing. The only difference is that I'm personally getting more enjoyment from digital media than the alternate-me.
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