I torrented lower decks when it came out because they refused to take my money. It was out in Sep/Oct in the states, but not until January in the UK. Exactly the same reason I DCCed voyager episodes in the 90s

I've seen american TV, it's unwatchable. If there's no option to actually buy the content without pop up adverts for other shows, breaks in the narative, squishing of the screen, etc, I'll go to a supplier who can do that.

Mainly my reason for not pirating is legal, but I think it’s actually cheaper to pay $2-$4 to rent something than spend the money on hard drive space and a faster internet connection.

probably not. you can just delete the file when you're done if you don't want to watch it again. 50 GB is more than enough to maintain a queue of a few movies/shows. if you have enough bandwidth to stream legally without buffering, you have (roughly) enough to do the same with torrents. most tv show torrents are just rips from legitimate streaming sites anyway.

Why would you buy it anyway ? It's not like the music / cinema industry is in trouble.

If it's only to be the "good guy" then well congrats.. here's your medal.

I'm somewhat apathetic regarding the health of the music/tv/movie/game industries as a whole. I do care about specific shows, artists, and games though, and revenue is an important signal that businesses use to decide what to make more or less of in the future. if you don't pay for anything, you're essentially throwing away your vote. as a group, pirates are accepting that they only get to select from things that other people are willing to pay for.

Why would I not just leave my empty plastic bottle on the beach? It's not like the beach is in trouble because of my one bottle. People only avoid littering because they want to be the "good guy".