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Don't remember if it was the 90's, but we got trial versions of Photoshop on some magazine CD and it was then all about searching for cracks / patches to it. These were quite small and bearable to download on dialups. And of course, even otherwise, dialups really taught all of us patience ... our generation thus knows the value of delayed gratification :).

My older brother and I were pirating software from BBSes before the World Wide Web existed.

Talk about being there when the deep magic was written.

Exchanging "emails" over FidoNet was so cool

Or buying CDs packed with software from markets. In Glasgow you could get copies of loads of high-end software from traders in the Barras market.

I definitely pirated Photoshop around 1996 from the macfilez (possibly zelifcam by then) AOL chat room.

BBS existed long before that, and even before that we had "sneakernets" or "copy parties". I assume the term "pirating" is much newer than the concept of copying software, or copyright of said software.

efnet