Pitstop 2. I copied that floppy.

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.

Most of the stuff I was looking for couldn't even be found on store shelves. Before online shopping and streaming, if it wasn't the latest release or biggest hit, you probably wouldn't be able to find it locally. You'd waste time browsing up and down aisles of junk only to leave disappointed, then try again at another store, hoping that by some miracle they'd have it.

Then I discovered that terabytes upon terabytes of content was available, nearly instantly and conveniently, on the internet. All you had to do was click a few buttons and you had what you wanted. That was about 25+ years ago, and the recording industry still has not adapted to offer a service that even comes close to what was available back then.

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

I lived in china and it was the only way to access loads of media. When I got back I saw the hellscape that streaming had become. We recreated cable. That and not owning anything anymore. So I still sail the high seas. Even if I wanted to pay the high price of 30 different streaming services it's a better more enjoyable experience sailing.

Wanted to play some games, didn't have money but I did know someone that knew someone that knew someone that ran a BBS that had some pirated games.

Yes, I'm that old.

I was a teenager who wanted to be a 1337 haxxor so I found out what warez were, and then wanted to play a bunch of games for free.

Basically as soon as I found out about it. I really got into it when I later discovered emulation. Never felt bad about it; I was pretty much only looking for games I literally could not buy because they could only be had via retailers, and they didn't always carry every title.

Hmm, this is an interesting question, as I live in a 3rd world country it is hard to pinpoint exactly which event drove me to this beautiful world.

With that said, the first console that we ever had (sis and I) was a PS1, it came with Gran Turismo and DBZ Ultimate Battle 22, I think.

Anyway, I was probably 6 years old, and my dad took care of chip it (took it to a place, it is common to do that in Mexico) and then I got the pirated games for dirt cheap in flea markets and such, a similar event happened with the PS2.

But when I truly sailed the seas for myself, at least in a gaming scenario, happened when I got my Nintendo DS phat, I quickly knew about a R4, and managed myself to find ROM sites, homebrew, heck I used to use Windows Live Messenger in that little thing lol (DS Lite at that time).

I mean, I pirated software for PC and possibly burned some games for the PS1/PS2 before having the DS, but having unlimited portable fun with the DS (and then the PSP) was when I turned into a no return point.

VB 6. We were learning it in school and I wanted to learn on my own as well. Spent a lot of time on IRC after that.

I started years ago when cable was on top to get away from ads, I stopped for a few years but since ads have been making a comeback I started back up, screw ads

wir hatten ja nichts

My brothers were using limewire like 20 years ago when I was a preteen. So I started using limewire, and quickly surpassed them in skill. Jumped to TPB when they got popular. I now host the family media server, and take requests 😬

Still haven't taken the time to set up sonarr radarr and the like. Would probably simplify my life a lot. But I've got a system and it works 🤷‍♂️

Was born into it really. Got my first PC. Knew nothing. Slowly learnt stuff off my sis who was going into engineering. Thru her I met a guy who was dating a friend of ours. He was like hey sign up for this BB and you can get tons of free shit. He pointed to D2 which I played like mad. I signed up and just got thrown into the scene. Ended up being an admin of that board for a bit. This was around the time Oink was at its peak. Like 2y later, gone.

Went to uni myself and just supplied everyone with free stuff for school. Even profs lol.

And that’s just how I stayed. Felt good buying everything I used after I got a job out of school tho. Still use some of it today! But for most media, it’s just like why NOT sail. If movies were a buck a pop like they should be, I’d probably furl up my Jolly Roger. Till that day tho 🏴‍☠️

I started downloading music, because it was free.

Over the years I've found many more excuses to justify it though.
P.s. Down with big corpo etc. etc.

I think the first thing I ever pirated was Cars. I was like 13, They didn't have a VHS for it at the library and our home internet at the time was too slow to even think about streaming, so I figured out how to torrent and it took like 6 days to get a complete copy of the movie.

I ended up sticking to pirating and pack packratting all the movie files locally specifically because our internet was so bad.

Being a poor elementary school kid who wanted to play the trendy singleplayer games.

Ssi randomly stopped paying me

Oh, you think seeders are your ally, but you merely adopted piracy as an adult. I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't pay for anything until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but expensive.

The peers betray you, because they belong to me. I will show you my torrent collection, whilst preparing to show you my ratio. Then I will set my upload speed limit to 0.

Holy shit I also pirated DC talk hahaha. Wasn't allowed to listen to it .

What would people think of they hear that I'm sailing the high seas?

Availability, since I was a kid till today, most things are not available in my country. Convenience is a bonus. Price is a negative because my usenet/indexer cost is more than netflix/prime/disney and 2 more local services of my country.

My dad introduced me to Napster and Weird Al.

Originally, it was being a child and not having any money of my own, and my mom getting out her wallet to enter card information on a website she had no previous knowledge of, for something she would never use personally, was a whole... thing that I can probably count on my hands the number of times it actually happened. So I stopped even asking and figured it out myself.

Edit: also, we had netflix but sometimes the shows I wanted to keep up with were still airing and I couldn't wait.

Now, I just don't think any company that would take my money in exchange for, generally temporary, access to media/software really deserves or needs my money all that much, and especially not more than I do. I also strongly resent that there is not a public and legal domain for things that are older than like 5 or 10 years and not actively being worked on.

When I was learning programming, free software for schools wasn't (officially) a thing yet.

Lots of folks pointedly looked the other way so I could have a home copy of the development environment I was learning.

I found a website that showed my how to use RSS feeds to automatically download TV shows. Having my favorite shows download automatically overnight was very convenient. There was no streaming services for TV shows back then and even if there was, my internet was way too slow for that. I had a portable media player with a massive 80GB hard drive that I could load my pirated TV shows and ripped DVDs on when I was away from home.

When I discovered soulseek and could stop paying $20-$30 per CD. Incidentally, I bought an iPod round the same time and couldn't copy my mp3s over, and that's the last time i ever bought an apple product

Wanted to not pay for stuff. Still pirate movies and tv shows. Games not so much.

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.

Back then: The prices of shit and ease of procurement. Nowadays, I’ll buy reasonably priced software because I’m not a broke dick and like to have support if needed. Though, understandably, there’s still a lot of bullshit software that’s way too expensive. But I lean towards foss software when I can get away with it.

But for streaming/cable/satellite? I’d rather wipe my ass with that money. I’ll go to the theater if a movie looks good enough, just to change things up, but with so much awful shit being produced… nope.

I pay for music streaming on Deezer, but also have a carefully curated media library and run Nicotine 24/7 to share on slsk.

I guess it’s a toss up between money and principle. 🤷‍♂️

Just born to break the rules.

As a child my parents didn't want to give me their credit card (like fair enough), but so I had to find other ways.

Then payed for netflix for a while and was pretty happy with it. Since you have to have like 13 streamubg services of which only about half are available on my country I found Plex. Now I use Jellyfin and couldn't be happier.

Overpriced, privacy-invasive streaming services that require shitty proprietary software to use them

During my early years of life, my late father used to pirate a lot of movies. And my brother went to same path as my late father. Saved a lot of time and money.

I'm very fond of DC Talk's So Long My Friend.

To answer your question, it was probably music that sent me sailing the high seas. The only way to get music back then was to tape songs off the radio, download them online or buy a bootleg CD off the street.

Otherwise you'd have a spend a tonne at the few music shops we have/had.

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.