The original post: /r/piracy by /u/bthest on 2024-10-03 02:55:34.
When I was a kid, around the around the turn of the millennium, me and my older brother took our satellite box and card to get "serviced" at a sketchy roadside bar/game room on the highway. His friend was working for the cable company at the time but he was somehow able to obtain a new satellite dish, install it in a discreet location and aim it (maybe he worked for them before.)
We got thousands of channels (pretty much everything they offered) and every single pay-per-view movie channel unlocked.
For a while I was the cool kid at school who was somehow able to get VHS copies (later DVD copies after we got a burner) of new movies way before the were on Hollywood Video's shelves.
Every few months the satellite company would alter something and our box or card would have to be re-cracked or replaced. Then one day in 2004 the bar closed for good and has long since been demolished. and we were left with nothing but antenna crap, so we got DSL and I discovered P2P for the first time (eMule).
