What percentage globally? I have no idea. I'm not a pollster but I'd hate to try to design a poll that could figure that out. It seems like the sort of thing pe

What percentage globally? I have no idea. I'm not a pollster but I'd hate to try to design a poll that could figure that out. It seems like the sort of thing people will lie about. When I was young, I pirated because I was broke. When I got a job and grew older, I would continue to pirate, because it was annoying to shuffle through a DVD collection or for the game the disk to put into the drive bay for a game that was already installed on the computer's hard disk. I regularly downloaded no-cd cracks for games I had legally bought, and if I'm going to be fucking around with shady executables from disreputable corners of the internet anyway, I might as well save myself a car trip to the mall. When Netflix streaming became ubiquitous and Steam became good, I stopped pirating, because it was more convenient to do media legally than it was to pirate them. Now that Netflix has been Balkanized into a dozen competing services, all of which are shitty, I pirate TV/movies again, because it is more convenient to always know what site to go to to acquire media. I subscribe to Amazon prime for the free shipping, but even for media which is available on Amazon Prime, I still pirate it because -- wait for it -- the DRM doesn't work. I still buy games on Steam because it's easy and convenient. If Ubisoft and EA get their way and cut into Steam's market share and make it so there are too few games available to play on Steam, or games that I've already paid for start becoming un-bought from my library, or Steam starts becoming unusable due to onerous DRM, I'll start pirating again. Music is more complicated. In the '90s I ripped all my CDs into MP3s, and burned them onto data CDs which I put into a big ass CD changer in the trunk of my car. Later on, I could fit all of them on a DVD in the head unit. Later on, I could put them all on a USB thumb stick which I plugged into the console. As time went on, I realized I wasn't engaging with my music in any meaningful way. I'd turn it on and hit random and literally never think about what I was listening to. So I've picked up vinyl specifically because it's less convenient. I have to actually think about what music I want to listen to, and then actively make a decision. So do I pirate movies and TV because I like free stuff? Not really. I probably spent in the ballpark of $50 on games a month, maybe $200 on music per month. I have the money to pay for video media. But the last thing I watched was the Legend of Vox Machina, which is produced by Amazon Studios specifically for Amazon Prime Video, which I already pay for, and I pirated it anyway because it's more convenient. So do I pirate movies and TV for ideological reasons? Not really. I mean, don't get me wrong, Hollywood is kinda gross, but so is the video games industry and the music industry. Sorry for rambling. I guess my point is that it's incorrect to set this up as a dichotomy between getting free shit and sticking it to the man. For me at least, it's neither of those things.