"Piracy isn't stealing" doesn't require a qualifier. It's objectively a separate, lesser crime. That correlation is just the result of effective, aggressive marketing that conflates the two. It was so effective that everyone misremembers the "you wouldn't steal a car" ad.
It's almost always going to be easier to obtain them through other means.
In the past, I've had good luck with StreamFab. It's expensive and Mac/Windows only, I believe. I had a smallisj use case and was able to automate mac address changes on a VM so could get by with the free trial. Been a while, so I can only vouch that it used to work well, not sure if anything's changed since then.
There was a pretty widespread crackdown on widevine decryption keys last year, iirc. That's the sort of thing you'd be looking for if you wanted to continue searching out other tools or possibly roll your own.
Most posts from what I see are now ‘’meme’s’’, ‘‘I justify pirate because…’’ and ‘’This is my collection!’’. Pretty much just hurr-durr look and upvote me kind of content.
/r/piracy wasn't much different in that regard when I unsubbed from it, long before leaving reddit last summer. It happens anytime there's a large enough userbase, as that sort of content is easier to create and consume, the latter making it more likely to get voted up.
How many people really discover new music through piracy?
Everyone I've ever known. I mostly listen to metal, which undeniably became what it is because of people mailing pirated cassettes in the early 80s. 8 of my 10 favorite bands, I discovered by finding someone with good taste on Soulseek and grabbing the stuff I'd never heard of before. Piracy is key in the spread of underground music.
Artists that sell out stadiums wouldn't be affected much, but the ones that actually need the concert income absolutely would.
Tech/programming stuff is exactly why I did nuke mine. Going isn't as meaningful if you leave a bunch of value behind when you do. While I'm here for entertainment now, I'm often spending my reddit time during work hours on vendor-hosted support forums, stackexchange, etc. now.
Gradually, that library will be relocated to other places. Instead of just not going, I think it's better to take away others' reasons for going too, give them reason to seek out better libraries.
Just downloading/consuming isn't the illegal part. It's why you hear about torrent users getting ISP notices, but not people who download from usenet or watch pirate sports streams.
The Plex watchlists seemed stupid and pointless to me...until someone pointed out you can subscribe to your Plex watchlist in Radarr/Sonarr. Now, I can watch trailers on Plex, add stuff, and it shows up automatically when released. Super convenient.