At least for media, piracy websites have a more extensive catalogue (of course) but they also have better privacy which is crazy. And they also allow you to use ad blockers. Sites you pay for would still show ads sometimes and don’t even allow VPNs.
At that point there is no point on paying for streaming and if you wanted to support the creators you could do it separetely with merch, other proyects they have or direct donations if any of those are aviable.
Well, I grew up with knowledge of cable pirating in apartment complexes, VHS recording of retals to share or rewatch or watch later, and tape and CD sharing and mixing…
So as far as Im aware pirating was always a easy, viable, and economically savvy choice.
I did explore Netflix for a brief time 15 years ago, but the quality of their service degraded heavily, and I still pirated alongside my Netflix membership, as their content was always limited. And I shared my member ship with others, then later occasionally used a membership that was shared with me, until Netflix broke that system.
Why specifically in apartment complexes? Would the apartment broadcast the signal or is it something about the wiring?