I was a loyal giganews user for 10+ years. Then the content creators started getting content pulled very quickly, sometimes within days of upload, and the whole thing started becoming a huge hassle.

By this point I was making enough money that $30 a month split between a few streaming services and a few bucks occasionally for a movie on amazon prime wasn't a big deal. It feels good to pay for quality. But as a young kid, who wanted to experience so many types of media and no means to pay, usenet was the best.

Piracy is the perfect thing for kids interested in computers to use. It's complex, you need to figure stuff out, takes a lot of time (which kids have), and the reward for doing so is free content. But once you get old and are time-poor and have the money, it's not really needed anymore.