The "dawn" of online piracy was in the 70s and 80s with BBSs and Usenet, way before Napster. Even right before we had Napster, we had IRC as mentioned in the ar

The "dawn" of online piracy was in the 70s and 80s with BBSs and Usenet, way before Napster. Even right before we had Napster, we had IRC as mentioned in the article. Napster was more like the beginning of peak online piracy. Then we had all the Napster knock-offs for 10 years. Piracy pretty much lost mainstream appeal after that with the emergence of legal media streaming services.