As Gabe Newell once said:

Piracy is an issue of service, not price

Same for music for me. Only difference now, I get to choose where my money goes. Instead of some streaming company giving next to nothing to the bands I listen to and everything else going to some super popular stuff I don't enjoy.

So...you're going to post torrents and seed all those movies...right?

You do realise that you're saying that piracy didn't work for you, so you went out and spent your money instead, yeah?

Various studies showed the same over the last 20-25 years. Pirating does increase revenue for companies and articles torrented.

Same here. YIFY torrents were just a gateway drug to 4k HDR blurays.

Are there any good services like bandcamp, but for video? Even if it doesn't have blockbuster/popular movies I'd be interested. I spend a lot of money on bandcamp because it's easy and simple: I give them money and in return get bits that I do what I want with.

That was shown in the early days of Metallica's (fuck Metallica, btw) bullshit with Napster. The music fans were downloading music, as well as buying music, more.

The problem is you're obsessed with movies to do such things. Just download 1080 and watch it on your tv or mobile and that's it, you watched a movie. And if you're willing to help the community, encode, seed, distribute and that's enough.

I've ripped a good number of blu-rays to network storage. If you're looking for older, less popular stuff it's the best option. And older releases are usually just a few bucks. The new stuff I torrent because I can usually find a decent rip, but for stuff I want to put in my library a rip from optical disk is the best, but not free of course. You can even do it for free, public libraries often have a good collection of older releases on optical disk.

Same idea with video games. There are many game franchises that I never would have gotten into as a kid if I hadn't been able to pirate them. I usually still pirate games to try them out, and if I end up enjoying it or want features like online play, I might buy it during a Steam sale.

My local wall-mart has a large number of older blockbusters on their bargain bin. Got all 3 John Wicks for $15 total, and then directly ripped them into my server

Many others have said before people who pirate spend more on media than those who don’t.

I pay for cable tv (get off my lawn) in addition to several other streaming services.

And sometimes I still can’t get the thing I want. You think I’m going to spend even more when my half dozen existing subscriptions don’t cover this one thing? I don’t think so.

I wouldn't be the faithful Final Fantasy patron I am today had it not been for a ROM of FF VI my old room mate put on my computer back in college. Now I own nearly ALLLLL of them (the ones available on modern platforms). I've also started investing in the Trails series for a similar reason and I don't regret it.

Yep.

I’m a fan of a certain sport, and they didn’t have a reasonable way of making it available on demand… so I sailed the seas. But lo and behold once an app was available, I was happy to pay as I’m no longer having to wait.

Someone smarter than I said. The largest part of piracy is a delivery issue. Make thing’s available and people will pay for them.

I bought more CDs while Napster was in its heyday than the entire rest of my life combined.

Avid reader here, and I sometimes browse books on pirate bay. When I find one I like I download the ebook and if I read it I also buy a print edition. Not everyone does that, of course, but in my case piracy generates sales.

This happened to me too. I download movies and shows onto my plex and watch them at my leisure. If I love a show or movie I get the Blu-ray and watch it in 4K/atmos! It’s nice being able to sample things before buying.

The problem with older media is that you have to actively create torrents, the tracker might fold, etc.

With eD2K, it's very old school P2P filesharing, just give it a directory and the files on it are shared on the network.

Of course, the "push" part to torrent tracker sites isn't as active.

I use both torrents and eD2K, depending on what I'm looking for.

Similar outcome. At this point, I mostly just rent 4k online because my massive Plex library has bit-for-bit Blu-ray rips of everything I care about enough to have on hand. But I spent years building that library by ripping physical media.

I still buy and rip CDs because I love album art and want high quality. If not for the former, I'd likely go flacc or lossless and buy online.

So much this. Watched so many anime for free that I ended up spending a bunch of money on figurines, mangas and other merchandise!