[BossingAround]

This is certainly true for me. As a kid, I used to pirate movies/tv shows on my slow 1Mbps connection. Nowadays, I just want to turn on my TV and start Netflix/HBO/Disney/...

But, with the advent of pretty severe content locking and geolocking on various services, pirating is starting to be very enticing once again. The thing I would miss the most is the recommendation algorithm, which tends to be pretty good on Netflix.

[homebrewer]

> with the advent of pretty severe content locking and geolocking on various services

It's been the norm for many of us for decades. Even if you want to pay and stay an "honest citizen", you're not found of being worthy by most streaming/distribution platforms. For the longest time I thought geolocking will die out and we will be able to access the same stuff you have, but it's going the opposite way.

As the result, "piracy" never died out here, it's more alive than it's ever been. Take the hint. It's a true pleasure to see dozens of countries from around the world represented in the peer list of my torrent client. At least there is one area where we can work together for the good of all.

(Gabe is one of very few exceptions, and Steam is a very successful platform commercially speaking, once again proving the old quote, by gaben himself IIRC.)

[int_19h]

There's also the part where the shows that motivated you to get that particular service subscription might not even be there next year. Unlike the pirated stuff that you download.

Ironically, now it's possible to have the best of both worlds by paying for the subscription to get access to the catalog, then using DRM-stripping downloaders to get local copies of everything you actually care about.

[daveslash]

Downloading The Matrix over a 28k dial-up modem (on a shared house/family line) was an exercise in patience! I didn't, but a friend did... and we all waited weeks for it to finish.

[im3w1l]

Weeks... that's gotta have cost more than buying it?

[daveslash]

Ha, that's a good point. We were broke kids in a rural town without drivers licenses a hundred miles from anywhere that sold physical VHS or DVDs. We didn't have money, and if we did we didn't have the means to get to a store, and if we did it was far far away, and if we could I don't think most of us had DVD players at home. The phone bill, on the other hand - parents pay for that. ;-) IIRC, our dial-up ISP was a "local call", which was free then. I'm pretty sure my friend capitalized on the phone line during night times when the house was asleep.