Re:Tillis Releases Text of Bipartisan Legislation to Fight I...
by Netcob on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @12:40PM
(#25508923)
It's relatively unusual to have a job as a teenager where I come from. So I had to make do with birthday/christmas gifts and pocket money. During my university days my budget was pretty much just rent and food. I could afford a PC, maybe a console for playing games, but hardly any games unless I'd buy used ones.
Movies and TV shows, all pirated. I'd buy some DVDs if I was really obsessed with something.
Eventually I got a job, and streaming / affordable PC games caught up with reality and met me half-way.
If you put a price on everything I pirated before that time, I'm not sure if I could have afforded that even if I stopped paying rent and buying food completely.
Too bad streaming is getting more fractured again. If I want to watch 6 TV shows, I have to subscribe to 5 streaming services.
There’s also the flipside of some pirates turning into paid customers (think Photoshop).
Then there’s the fact that the number is vastly inflated as some people use the $150,000 maximum fine as the cost of a pirate copy. Never mind the fact that it was actually $5 (or whatever) of “lost” revenue.