Theoretically they could hash the the two characters with a salt and store it that way, but extremely unlikely they'd actually do that. And also fairly pointless. But still technically possible.

I am using unRAID so if one dies I can just replace it. About 4 years ago I bought a lot of fifteen 3TB SAS drives and I have had them running 24/7 since then. Funny enough not a single one has died. They all had around 5 years of power-on hours and now they are up to 9 and still going strong. Honestly I expected to lose at least one per year but they are surprisingly resilient.

We already live in a world with copyright law and it's a shitshow so how much worse can it be? Have fun owning nothing and being nickle and dimed by subscriptions.

Again, piracy is not stealing it is copyright infringement. I don't believe ideas are property so I don't believe in protecting them. It's not that complicated.

That's not comparable. Restaurants have to supply physical goods. It costs money to transport and once it is consumed it is lost. Software is not bound by any of that. You can make unlimited copies without lifting a finger and use it indefinitely. If I could open a restaurant and feed people by simplying copy-pasting the food yes I would do that. World hunger would be solved.