I was an MP3 courier in a group on a lot of global top sites. I remember being in an irc chan for one of them (I think it was the hungarian one) and kali of the top group RNS stated his birthday or something else personal and said "oh crap I shouldn't have said that" lol. He was indicted by the DOJ in 2009! He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit copyright infringementalthouh 4 other members pleaded guilty.
They busted sites from time to time but RIAA couldn't do anything substantial. I stayed away from movies and tv because that was riskier and I enjoyed getting music a week or two before the p2p platforms got them. And also getting high quality rips. The sister group that did ISOs eventually got busted.
Saw the move from ftp to fxp and shell accounts and semi-auto and automated trading. Some government officials would spend years to infiltrate the groups to bust the sites and members.
Anyway, it was with being a courier that I got interested in code and had an insane amount of lines to handle all the topsite rules on what they would accept and I traded semi-automated. We even had a UI to help.
I actually met a few people from those days in person and they were really cool. Still friends with one of them today. Many groups required meeting in person or doing a phone call before you could join and then they eventually relaxed that.