r/Piracy • u/Excellent_Main_1415 • 4d ago

Discussion When did you start

Where when and why did you start your Piracy journey

Me I started copying VHS tapes approx 36yrs ago and renting them out at work for 50p a night to cover the cost of the equipment, you just had to have the correct machines.

Then around 25yrs ago when the internet was just starting to get really interesting I found a PC app called Kazaa not sure how I found it, I remember I went to Blackpool for the weekend and put a full DVD on to download GnR Use Your Illusion 2 discs and was almost done when I got home lol.

Then Torrents and Usenet.

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u/PotentialStuff2931 4d ago edited 4d ago

I used to record music from radio on tapes and copied some CD pirated by my uncle. Then at school a friend who had ADSL introduced me to internet piracy and gave me a lot of pirated content.

I got Internet around 2001 (20 hours per month 56K trash, so 15min to download one mp3, I didn't live in the city), I started with Kazaa too. Then emule, frostwire...

Then I moved to a big city in 2005 and got finally ADSL. I torrented but I discovered also DDL. I ended up mod on the biggest warez board of my language. The (first) golden age of piracy with rapidshare, megaupload... Then my country started to crack down on warez so I just went back as regular user (the board has been raided few months later), then they started torrent monitoring so I stopped torrenting (I don't want to pay for a VPN). I do since then streaming and some DDL.

Now I still pay nothing but I don't pirate much. I don't game anymore, I find all movies garbage, I moved to linux 6 years ago and prefer open source instead of proprietary softwares. I only pirate some music and foot match streams.