It's not a justification, just an explanation of what needs to change if people want me to pay for that content. Like I say I pretty much never pirate things if they're on steam, I've probably paid tens of thousands out to steam over the years.

(That being said, I do have access to cable television, netflix, and amazon prime streaming as well as the piracy setup, so people are getting paid. I'm not going to go buy a bunch of old red-dwarf and dilbert DVDs though, they just take up too much space)

You started the post with "I have a confession". I felt that guilt was implied.

Ahh, fair enough. I meant it more as just a turn of phrase, implying that it's a sordid affair. A little bit implying that I was going again church heterodoxy, that there were pressures to feel guilty. More "gay in the 70's" than "burn down an orphanage".

* against church orthodoxy

Man-- I don't steal content, because I've made a lot of money from IP and I think other people deserve for their work to be rewarded.

But I'm so jealous of the user experience for people who buy into a $5/mo plex and get better service than I'm paying for. IMO, that's broken.

So much time wasted, figuring out what service to watch something on, dealing with content ads, bad user interfaces... having content vanish and become unavailable, etc.

I don't even watch much video, but it's still way too much of a sink on my time.

I don't have to justify myself to you and do not intend to. I don't actually pirate anything, regardless.

My intent is that someone somewhere reads this and decides to let me buy their damn content. It's not a justification, it's an appeal. Put your album on bandcamp. Put your game on itch/gog/your own website/humble bundle, preferable without intrusive DRM. I have no idea where you'd put a movie or TV show, but there's probably some place.

Please.