You’re paying for your privacy. Also, a copy of a game or a movie is not a service.

I also use VPN all the time for privacy - if I wasn’t pirating I’d still have it. I’ve also used it at times to access region locked content.

I personally only pirate things I feel are more “moral” to pirate, or if I don’t have a choice - I never pirate any kind of indie content, for instance, but I do pirate movies and tv shows put out by large corporations. In undergrad I pirated almost all of my textbooks because the markups are unethical. I’m not against paying for things, I just want to boycott some specific companies, plus I’m often too broke to afford things or sometimes need a downloaded copy specifically for offline access. When I was working full time I did actually pirate fewer things - only things from the companies I boycott or things I can’t access legally where I live - and I will return to that once I finish grad school.

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You can ask the same thing at the internet level. Why are people paying for internet service when they could go to the public library and get free Wi-Fi.

Internet service VPNs are foundational networking. You need them to do anything else.

I pay 90€ a year for a vpn with high speeds that I actually don’t use that often.

However I can download games worth a thousand Euros (and don’t play them) with that vpn.

However when torrenting I need a vpn since uploading is prosecuted in my country.

If you want to download illegal stuff you can do that here with direct Downloads. Your chances of being caught are so slim that most people don’t need a vpn.

My most usage I have from the vpn is that I chan change ip addresses on the fly. Some Websites or Services don’t work for Europe and then I use the vpn. Or some Services block usage for your IP then changing it without restarting the Router is useful.

I don’t care about encryption, privacy and shit.

But I can’t get around the idea that people can pay for a service to refuse to pay to a service.

I mean, if you assume that the only reason people are pirates is because they refuse to pay anyone for a service then I could see why you would have trouble with this point. But that isn’t why most people pirate. Most people pirate because they don’t want to pay the extortionate prices that media companies demand for their IP. Spending some small yearly fee to avoid paying several much large fees looks like a pretty solid reason for paying for a VPN service.

My VPN comes out to about $2/month (got a promotional offer). What other service, exactly, can I buy for 2 dollars?

For me it’s more of a convenience issue. If there was a legit site with a subscription for a few bucks a month that had every TV show and movie on it that I could watch in high resolution without ads and other bullshit going on then I’d probably just do that. In fact I basically do that with music already with Spotify. Netflix looked like it might have been going that way back the day but then it all went sideways.

But yeah basically I just don’t want to have to subscribe to like 8 different services or have to keep switching around to find the show I want so piracy & a couple of bucks a month for a VPN is the better service IMO.

I pay $15/month for a seedbox because I prefer the overall experience compared to Netflix, etc. My parents have given me their login details for the services they subscribe to, and every so often, I check them out, but end up going back to my seedbox + Plex setup. Some of the reasons I prefer my piracy-based setup:

• I often set up a queue/playlist of shows, not necessarily all from the same series. As far as I’m aware, the streaming services let you do that.

• My shows never pause to ask me if I’m still watching.

• I can access an unlimited library of content without switching apps.

• Content won’t become unavailable if I try to access it from a different country or totally disappear when a contract expires.

• Some episodes of some shows have been edited/censored, or removed completely, from whatever streaming service hosts it, but those episodes are available in their original form via torrents.

VPN usage isn’t solely for pirating.

But, the use of one for pirating is just to keep the hassles down. It isn’t necessary to pirate in general.

How is the idea of paying $20 for 2 years so you can not pay for anything else confusing?

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VPN isn’t specifically for pirating, personally I could even torrent without it, no one would give a crap; my situation aside, you can DDL without a VPN and you’d still be in the clear

A “free” VPN is worse than no VPN. They have to pay for the service somehow, and you’re not paying, so they are making money off you somehow.