There are a few advantages

• you can use the latest and greatest upstream versions (even versions under active development)
• you can let the compiler optimize for your system (especially useful with PGO, but honestly only worth it for a few applications, e.g. video encoders)
• you have full flexibility over optional features

And it’s a good learning experience, sooner or later things won’t just work and you have to learn about compilers, linkers, various build systems and script languages etc.

But yeah, for most people it’s not worth the effort

Yea, thats essentially the problem. Companies getting greedy and trying to squeeze out more money by all means they can get away with. If they priced things fairly (and split the profits fairly with the content creators) a lot less people would have an incentive to look to the high seas. And just maybe (pipe dream, I know) worked out deals with each other so people wouldn’t need a freakin website just to find out where the hell they have to subscribe to watch something…

And sure, customers trying to avoid paying for anything is also a problem, but I feel the “cure” a) isn’t one and b) hurts the people who pay much more than those who pirate.

Essentially the grass isn’t green on either side of the fence and that’s why we can’t have nice things 🤷

Well I’d argue that two things can be wrong at the same time and I see OPs image mostly as a humorous jibe at the dubious practices that have risen with digital content. When you buy a Disc you can resell it, and the company can’t knock on your door and say “Excuse me, we’d like the disc back but we’ll keep your money”. With a digital movie you just obtain a license to view it that you can’t resell and can be taken away from you at any time (the cases I know of are admittedly rare till now and caused at least some public unhappiness and in some cases even law suites IIRC). All at the same or even higher price than before.

Then there is the fact that I’m all for using the correct terminology. When you steal something that something is lost to its previous owner. Piracy isn’t stealing it’s copyright infringement. Companies just prefer to call it stealing because it sounds more evil. Same with the billions of losses through piracy that they complain about. They are based on the wrong premise that every copy is a lost sale, which just isn’t true. Take you for example: you can’t afford it, so you personally don’t loose them anything. And maybe you even buy some stuff you wouldn’t have if you hadn’t pirated it, or something else from that company before that you really liked. Then I remember people from my school days who had all the movies, all the games, anything. But when you asked “How is it?” they mostly answered “Oh, I haven’t played it”. I doubt this kind of “collector” would do the same if it actually cost them money, even if they had the means. In short those number are inflated to make the problem appear bigger than it really is.

Is it still a problem/ morally wrong? Probably, but it does put things in a different perspective for me.

And no, I don’t need to justify anything to myself. My limiting resource is time, not money, so I buy my fish in the supermarket instead of trying to catch it on the high seas ;) Doesn’t stop me from grumbling about them, obviously