I have not had cable television since I was living in the dorms at college, it was free. I never really could afford cable and I often only watched a hand full of shows and I just pirated them through bit torrent, IRC, or UseNet. For a period I pirated everything I could. As technology pushed forward, it became less necessary.  The bulk of my pirating ways happened in the mid to late-2000’s during that awkward time when media companies were fighting the inevitable internet download ecosystem  It was a time when no one was really doing digital correctly, when experiments were happening everywhere, and when sites and stores were popping up (and being shut down) repeatedly. Essentially, if you wanted to go digital, nobody was making it easy for you. There was a point not that long ago when you couldn’t rent a movie online and watch it on a TV. Music downloads fluctuated In short, you had to jump through a lot of hoops.  If you wanted to download software or games, you had to do it on the faith it’d actually run because nobody offered refunds. So, I’d pirate a game or software, see if it worked on my aging computer, and then never actually buy it.  98% of my music piracy was just downloading albums because I feel the artist are getting screwed by the labels and I tend to purchase albums directly from the artist. If I couldn’t buy directly from them my philosophy was to stick it to the labels I will just download it.

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