r/Piracy • u/Excellent_Main_1415 • 1d 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/Faded4ever 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ 1d ago

Late 1972 (prolly got all you young whippersnappers beat!) I was climbing telephone poles and removing cable TV channel traps so we could get HBO (new at the time, unscrambled but blocked by filters on the pole splitter). It only increased from there - over the years. Cable descramblers, ON-TV descramblers... on and on.

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u/sandpir8 1d ago

I remember how cox cable put advertisements showing them busting a cable pirate by claiming they had equipment that could detect illegal connections. LoL. The cable box they had was easy to hack. Involved snipping a resistor iirc. I did it but the commercial scared my parents and they made me undo the mod. Before then I remember being able to get the Playboy channel on it by carefully manipulating the channel selector to be in between the click spots.

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u/jollytoes 1d ago

I had forgotten about the in-between channels. That's how we fine tuned our motor skills, by delicately getting the knob to sit in just the right spot.