it honestly depends on how much you use the service.

i had an account for a while to a site that shut down. while i had it i was downloading a bunch of different files, not necessarily pirated stuff.

i’d say if torrents isn’t a viable option and you would be using that site downloading at least 500 mb worth of data a day, it might be worth it. if something you want is available only on one of these sites, it depends on how bad you want it and how soon you want it.

i’m glad that there is an(other) program for audible. i like this one better. it automatically converts to a file format i prefer and downloads my books immediately, which is convenient for preorders. besides that, i personally would like to not use the audible app for playback; this is just a personal preference though. i have an audiobook app that works just as well. if anything this would just be me eliminating an app from my devices than anything else.

if I still downloaded directly to my local drive, I’d use utorrent BUT only the 2.2.1 version. it’s been at least 4 years since I’ve done that due to a lack of having a functional laptop so I’ve been out of downloading stuff that way for years, but even then I knew that modern utorrent was bad. I actually stopped using any new version once bittorrent bought it.

the offline gps app that I use and absolutely love I initially pirated for my iphone 3, then for my samsung galaxy vibrant and then actually bought and bought extras. I love this app.

then a few years ago they offered more features that I found useful but put them behind a subscription instead of buying them as a premium option as before and I don’t like that. I still get to keep the options I bought, but any future add-ons forces me to subscribe and I’m not doing that.

honestly it might push me to see if it’s possible to to pirate an app I already paid for to get any new features I may find useful.

my view on it lies in two seperate buckets:

1. if the thing being pirated is vastly overpriced for its function i don’t see it as immoral
2. if the thing being pirated is no longer available or was never made available for private ownership, ie only able to be streamed and only available on said service so long as the host streamer still has rights to do so, it isn’t immoral.

and just to be clear, i don’t see piracy as inherently evil or anticapitalistic. there have been several books and apps that i pirated that i liked and converted to an actual buyer to get more books in the series or get updates to the program.