Because all those sites appear and disappear too quickly. I don't have the time to track them down, and avoid the malware ones. I have a setup made where everything downloads automatically, and once downloaded, is mine forever.
I don’t want to download movies. I want to watch Star Trek. You can’t do that on Netflix anymore. So paramount plus (aka “janky Netflix”) gets my $10/mo extortion fee.
If it wasn’t infeasible to download all of TNG, voy, and ds9 to my iPad, I would in a heartbeat.
I mean, if your options were downloading a pirated movies from a shady website, or streaming a pirated movie from a shady website, why would choose the first one?
Torrent download sites are everything but shady, if you know how and where to look.
Maybe, but usually when I want to watch a movie I want to watch it right now, not in a few hours.
There are clients to stream torrents.
If you’re on a private BitTorrent tracker, the video quality and encoding is often significantly better (bitrates often double). The download speeds saturate your internet connection. Piracy is often the best, fastest and most ethical option (no DRM).
Once I have a local copy, I don't have to depend on the continued availability of the shady website. I can pass the copy along to friends who might also enjoy it, and I can watch the movie whether or not I happen to have high-speed internet access at the moment.
Get a RaspberryPi, install Jellyfin, Sonarr and transmission and you won't have to move a finger anymore.
It's not straightforward, you never know which site is still available, how many will work, how many mirrors you'll have to try. Also, most don't have subtitles, at least not in my language. Also, if you don't have super high speed connection, it may stall.