[pmx]

It isn't about the price. The level of service and the quality of the product you get by pirating is simply better. Streaming services break up shows and have s1-3 on one platform, 4-5 on another, and the rest on another still. You'll "buy" a movie on amazon prime video only for them to remove it so you can't watch it anymore. Prime video, a service you have to pay for now has ad breaks while watching shows. Even just FINDING stuff to watch is a nightmare, Netflix is the same stuff over and over again in different random made up categories.

[account42]

Plus, streaming services limit what devices you are allowed to watch on and what software you can use, especially if you want to watch the highest resolution version. It's completely absurd how some people accept that and continue paying those streaming services.

[darkwater]

I know and - cough cough - I might be embracing that as well. But still paying someone that basically leeches on someone else (and I don't mean Hollywood/Netflix etc, I mean the ripper themselves) unethical.

[bmacho]

A lot of the time the distributor (or legal IP owner) is like a billion times more immoral than the ripper (or IP violator), and they are the ones leeching. You can choose legality over morality, but then don't claim moral high ground.

[darkwater]

You have probably misunderstood. There are 4 parties here:

A) the content creator, owner of the IP

B) the people that copy the content made by A and publish it (i.e. the "release groups"). They can distirbute the content over bittorrent, sharing sites etc

C) people that run platforms that share copies made by B, and they offer access to those copies (sometimes even just a hash to a torrent) with some kind of paid subscription. Their added value is making it easier to access content copied by B.

D) final users, they can choose to consume content from A, B or C.

My point was that D paying for C are... weird, in my opinion.

Edit: technically there is a 5th group, like C but that do it for free, running forums etc at most hosting some banner to pay the hosting cost and not much more.

[bmacho]

I answered the Hollywood/Netflix part. Distributors, most prominently Apple and Amazon are shitty companies, and paying them is arguably much more unethical than paying "C", even if the latter is illegal.