Inspired by a post since deleted, I feel bad for probably coming off judgemental about the poster’s taste in the movie that drove him to consider sailing.
The earliest desired media I can remember that drove me to figure out sailing was DC Talk, a Christian rock band. Pop music was not allowed in my house, so a Christian group was tantalizing and scandalous to a rebellious, young Vanth. Things escalated from there.
First time, it was because I was a kid that couldn’t pay for the movies/music/games I wanted. The high seas provided me with a solution for that.
Then I started making money and Netflix streaming came along making it both cheap and convenient. I docked my ship and forgot about my pirate life for a long time. Everything was good, living a quiet life…
But then the corporate greed caught up and ruined everything. Streaming prices became absurd, content got fragmented to way too many services and they fucking started introducing ads.
So here I am, setting sail once again. I didn’t need or want this, but they have forced my hand with their infinite greed.
Same for me - I got fed up of using JustWatch to check which (if any) of my subscribed streaming platforms had the film I wanted, open said platform, search for the film, find out it’s not actually available (or I have to pay on top of my subscription), and rage quit.
I even looked for a way to use lots of streaming platforms from the same interface, but of course you can’t do that cause DRM/lockin/etc.
Yeah they’re fighting really hard to combat piracy, but at the same time all their decisions are what is actively pushing their customers (back) to piracy.
Don’t forget deleting things you “bought” from right out under your nose.
Seriously, I did the same thing, early times pirating, only for my whole family. And when Netflix was good, requests for TV shows and movies went way down. I only had to pirate really obscure stuff that wasn’t easily accessible.
But now I’m back in full swing, more than ever before honestly, out of necessity. And I don’t see it slowing down.
I’ve never “bought” digital streaming media for that exact reason, so that happened impacted me personally. I didn’t trust them to begin with and I was right in not doing so. But yeah, that’s definitely also a shitty move and valid reason to pirate IMO.