[subpixel]

My experience is that the learning curve for piracy has increased quite a bit. IIUC you need some private tracker to reliably source things, something that takes time and connections most people don't have.

Despite being strongly motivated to find and watch things that are inexplicably unavailable to me (especially new foreign cinema) I usually just wait, and then sign up for a trial of whatever service has it a year or more after I read the review.

[Semaphor]

> My experience is that the learning curve for piracy has increased quite a bit. IIUC you need some private tracker to reliably source things, something that takes time and connections most people don't have.

Only if you want rare and older stuff (and even then, only sometimes). Anything mainstream, a public tracker is more than enough.

[Arainach]

Are content owner letters/lawsuits still a thing? Piracy was cool(tm) when I was a broke high school student, but now that I have assets worth being sued over (and now that if my ISP cut me off I couldn't just move to a different apartment at a moment's notice) I'll just pay for the Bluray or for a month of Hulu or whatever, it's far simpler.

I have a significant legitimate media library (>1TB), I have the Plex/Kodi infrastructure to stream it to my TV, but going one step further and mixing in piracy is a step I'm not willing to take.

[Semaphor]

Depends on your country. In Germany: Extremely. Probably a few seconds of uploading (of a movie or porn, don’t think they care much for other things) will get you a letter (edit: C&D + damages, courts see it as commercial distribution, so the letter blackmails you to pay 300-500 € instead). Or you can use a VPN.

As I said in another post, I like to pay when given the option and I don’t have to jump through tons of hoops.

[sebastiansm]

Interesting. Here in Chile we can do almost everything with our Intenert connection.

I dont know now that we signed the TPP11 how things are going to change.

[Semaphor]

It's very Germany-specific, the whole "commercial distribution" bullshit is what enables the cottage industry of blackmail lawyers

[emeril]

you just need to pay a few dollars for a foreign seedbox that is expressly designed for this purpose

you can then just set the seedbox as a source in kodi, I can even add torrents while sitting on my couch on my phone with the mobile interface

I have shared accounts to a variety of streaming services that I pay for but I largely prefer using kodi as it's a much more pleasant experience

[FullMetalBitch]

If you are in a lenient country you'll be fine with a public tracker, and it's easy to deploy sonarr and some torrent client to download things automatically.

[pcthrowaway]

I haven't torrented in forever. I usually just google "Watch XXXX online free" or check a few sites that I frequent that allow you to stream them.

It's (almost) as easy as looking something up on youtube.

Why would "normal" people muck about with torrent software? I think it's mostly the groups doing (and monetizing) the re-uploads that bother with torrents