Piracy and such hoarding are inextricably intertwined. If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult.

Streaming services have a similar issue (re-encoding, bad rereleases due to licensing issues, delistings, crappy format choices in the first place) but generally a bit better SLA-like and a longer timeframe to watch certain content.

That's the same for non-pirates in this rent economy where you don't own the things you buy anymore. And anyone I know who's seriously into movies, meaning they watch stuff far beyond the Follywood mainstream, is part of some online club/"pirate group" if you want to call them that, because there isn't another way to get a lot of the rare stuff. Even though someone may legally hold the rights, but they simply don't make it available to the public.

> "And anyone I know who's seriously into movies, meaning they watch stuff far beyond the Follywood mainstream..."

This sounds pretty dreadful - "Follywood" is hardly clever I'm afraid to say. Especially when linking it to an elite snobbery of being "seriously into movies" .

But please hear me out - I don't mean to just rip on you for a turn of phrase. But there are a couple of things you are maybe overlooking that are sort of implied by tying these concepts together as you have.

Hollywood is a truly magnificent human achievement, but sometimes it's hard to see that when bobbing around in the waves of its deluge. Step back a bit and consider that in the past century it has produced a steady stream of narrative masterpieces that are shared by the whole world. That the stagecraft and special effects have given palpable form to impossible dreams, etc.

In less glowy-flowy terms, it is an overwhelming machine designed to produce and transmit pure culture. A major force in what they call "Cultural Imperialism". To a not insignificant degree it turned the tide in the Cold War, for example. You can see the struggle every time there is a news story about China demanding modification, or rejecting Hollywood output. Eventually Hollywood will win that struggle, even if it takes a few generations.

There are many countries with their own film industries, least of which is China, but including India, Japan, Korea, Italy France, and on and on. But none of them have had remotely the success, popularity or power of Hollywood. The place, the machine is an absolute Triumph.

But to get back to your unfortunate turn of phrase... imagining that you or they have some elite status due to watching films out of the mainstream - A major component of the Hollywood machine is using the mainstream films' revenue to subsidize genre films, student films and often picking up truly independent films. These are the elitist films you seem to be referring to, that or the film output of the other countries. This range of films have always been a part of the machine, since the early days a century ago. Much of it is mediocre or clumsy. Sometimes they are shocking or disruptive. Sometimes they are genuinely brilliant or visionary.

But all of this obscure stuff that movie buffs are glorying in, ultimately this is just the output of the training ground for the Hollywood Mainstream. Consider Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson's filmography to see what I mean. Both started out making quirky indy horror films and once graduated began putting out $Billion dollar joints.

> If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult.

The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).

Amazon Glacier assumes that you only retrieve a fraction of the data.

So it's for hoarding?

I think it is more intertwined with your movie-watching habit. Akin to that in the DVD age most people probably only had maybe a couple of dozens, few with entire walls in their home dedicated to movie storage.

Almost all of the movies/series I watch are somewhat obscure (from a Hollywood perspective) so I like to keep them around. But I don't watch nearly enough movies or care enough about their longevity, that a single, non backed up external drive wouldn't be good enough.

I guess there are many people who pirate for the sake of pirating trying to collect as much content as they can without actually consuming it all. But don't know what proportion this is.

I remember getting together with a high school friend in the 90s and him talking about a similar setup (modulo 90s technology including dial-up internet access) for downloading pirated software. He never actually used the software, he just collected it. The plus side of digital hoarding is that the hoarder is less likely to die alone after being trapped by a falling pile of stuff.

I bet in we'll see a hoarder who dies alone under a pile of high density 8TB sandisk magnetic tapes. Full of something important like pirated twitch streams.

The multimillionaire, locally known for his completely isolated & reclusive lifestyle, was found to have been financially destitute after his untimely passing from a freak accident.

Crushed to death under a stack of computer equipment, they leave behind only 1 Petabyte worth of Seagate 8TB hard disks. Upon investigating, it was found that each drive was completely filled with “boutique furry porn.”

Those who knew the deceased in passing say they cannot imagine where his millions had gone.

Suspiciously rich furries are the backbone of online art comissions ...

While I appreciate the concern, I've got a fair bit of free time, and to be clear I'm not actually worried about the financial cost. I'm living well within my means. Tomorrow I'm going to build a chicken coop.

The setup I've got doesn't require very much active maintenance, aside from yelling at my father to tag things better. I'm sure I could just go to sketchy pirate streaming sites (putlocker and the like) if I was concerned about the money. The point of this isn't so much that I'm spending too much on this hobby, but that piracy really is a service problem.

It is mystifying to me that people cannot understand the simple meaning of the article: Paid programming provides bad service for the money, enough so that you get a better experience via back channels. If the publishers want your business, they will need to provide service better than you can cobble up yourself.

I object to the term "pirating" here. Piracy involves depriving people of life and property. You are not doing anything like that. Bootlegging might be a tolerably apt term. Bootlegging is just bypassing onerous restrictions and taxes, with an admixture of freeloading.

My wife pays for various channels, but I torrent the same content because the experience is radically better. Am I pirating? I don't think I am even bootlegging.

The main thing keeping me from doing it more (I hardly ever do anymore) is that I just don't have time to watch things. I have taken to running what little I do grab at 1.5x to 2x so I can spare the time. Now, not running that fast seems intolerably glacial.

All that said, hoarding is a common symptom of depression. Treating depression is a very, very good idea.

> Tomorrow I'm going to build a chicken coop. The setup I've got doesn't require very much active maintenance, aside from yelling at my father to tag things better.

Think you might have to feed the chickens along side your tagging scheme.

> Jokes aside, would you consider deleting your entire collection and then also cancel subscriptions and possibly give away or sell any tech equipment you do not use for work? And then find something else to do with the newly-freed time? Can you do it for 6 or 12 months? If not, why not? Try to figure out why you are doing it to begin with.

Anecdotally, I have a mild data hoarding hobby and no streaming subscriptions, and had my tech setup offline for about 6 months after moving to a new house. Spent most of the free time running ethernet, replacing dozens of recessed lights, replacing all the lights switches, assembling furniture, painting, picking up nails and rocks that reno guys left all over the lawn, and various other house things.

I bought a TV for black friday, wall-mounted it, and haven't even gotten around to plugging it in. (Or finding a piece of furniture from which to use it.) I'm looking forward to that; watching TV and playing video games is really more fun than patching drywall.

Hoarding does seem to be the issue. We aren’t on dial up connections anymore. I can grab a movie torrent and it will download within a minute or so.

Much of what we grab via torrent often takes a long time - generally slightly obscure stuff, so we 'hoard' a bit. No more than maybe high single digit terabytes, but... we can't always get some of this (older shows/movies, foreign stuff, etc).

The upside is that we have a lot to share with folks (mostly family) who've not necessarily seen this stuff (and can't typically find it on services in our area).