I pirate games to demo them. If I like them, I buy them legit. If I don't like them, I don't even play more than an hour and delete them.
It's the only medium I've done this... If I am pirating a movie or a TV show, it's either old and not able to be purchased or only available on Paramount+ which is absolute garbage and doesn't work 90% of the time I have tried to use it.
Same. There's one game I liked well enough after demoing it that I bought merch for the game to support the dev, alongside having bought the game on Steam. If a game is worth the price and is a quality game, I have absolutely no problem going from demo to buying it if I can.
All of my favorite doujinshi I've jerked off to I ended up buying physical editions of the artists newer works or their older stuff via melonbooks or toranoana.
I plan to pay for all my contents in the hope I get more of what I like, but I'm pirating them because with pirated content I don't have to worry about DRM
It's a website where you can buy music. I prefer having music in OGG or Opus format, and most of the time you can only get MP3. Bandcamp gives you the option to download your music in several formats, and one of them is OGG.
That's starting to change, because I can find more file-sharers who are using FLAC as storage becomes cheaper. Then I can convert FLAC to Opus. However, Bandcamp also gives you the option to stream music from their app, and it's nice to have access to so much music on my phone.
I wish I could donate to more novelists directly via their websites. I tend to pirate ebooks because I don't want a) the fuss of removing the DRM and b) to bankroll the destruction of the economy for 99% of people by giving money to big companies.
I pay for non popular things - bands that aren't well known, YouTube creators who haven't started doing those stupid "MUNDANE TASK 😱 GOES WRONG!" thumbnails yet, games or software that are free to download but hey maybe some money would be cool if you could, independent news and radio, etc.
Once something is popular I'll just thieve it. Artists are creators deserve to get paid for their work, but once they start getting paid dozens of times over for no extra effort it's hard to feel too bad about borrowing a free copy.
Disagree in some cases. A good chunk of YouTubers make good use of their "no new effort" earnings by reinvesting it into their channel. The end result is either better content or more of it
Plenty. Music and books in particular. I'm usually behind on making legit buys, but I treat piracy partially like a library where I can try before I buy.
That isn't saying I buy everything I pirate, I don't. But if I like it enough to keep the files, I'll wait until I find a good sale and eventually get a legit copy in some format.
I also do it in reverse, where I'll buy something, but pirate a digital copy when it's more convenient. That's typically for paper books and music on vinyl. Sometimes I'll even pirate a copy of a CD if I'm not up to dealing with the ripping (disability means I don't always have stamina for everything, so stuff like ripping a cd is low priority).
Do this all the time with video games. Pirate to try before I buy. If I really like the game I buy it in the hopes it creates an incentive to make more games like the ones I like.