“When I was a kid we were lucky if we only had to wait 9 months to rent a theatrical release. The generation before mine had to hope and pray a favorite of theirs would be re-released or air on one of, like, 7 TV channels. ‘I want it now’ is not a real justification for piracy.”
They would do the same if they weren't so old and crusty.
*I'm probably around the same age as this bastard. At least I'm not as crusty.
My father used to gift me a box of floppies with pirated games on them on Christmas, the next day ritual was checking each of them, 'cause half of them were duds. Still loved it, and I had no concept of piracy or it being wrong.
It's funny they act like piracy didn't exist before the internet. The tools are different and easier to use, but the justifications are the same. People want convenience, so if companies really cared about stopping piracy they would bend over backwards to make their content affordable and easy to access. Releasing only in theaters and/or doing the subscription shuffle is not convenient to the consumer.
I'm not very old, but I remember as a kid my big sister would go to the local market and buy burned copies of movies still in theaters (which were usually a recording someone made of the movie in the theater).