Yeah, like I said earlier on a YouTube adblock post, they are the same problem as piracy.

It’s a service problem, not an adblock/piracy problem. Gabe Newell hit that nail on the head so perfectly.

I used to watch and listen everything pirated, because:

• Most content I wanted to consume took years if not decades to be shown on TV or be available on VHS or DVD in my country.
• Most music I wanted to consume was on CDs that had 1 or 2 good songs with the rest being filler.
• When video media was broadcast, it was at times I wouldn’t be able to watch.
• When music was broadcast, it was all radio edits and constantly interrupted by annoying radio hosts.
• All this cost 100+ a month for TV, 25-30€ for every movie I wanted to watch, 20-30€ for every CD I wanted to buy totaling several hundred Euro a month.

Then Netflix and Spotify came along and changed all that. All of a sudden, 99% of what I wanted to watch and listen to was available for 25-30€ a month combined.

Now, if I want to watch everything I want to watch, I’d have to pay multiples of what it cost before streaming services came along.

So, yeah, I’m almost completely back to sailing the high seas and while I have no affinity for collecting anything, supplemented my viewing and listening habits buying Merch where I know the merch is handled by the artists and go to conventions where shows I like are represented and buying merch and signatures directly from actors and crew of those shows.