I've never been interested in illegally downloading music. I should note, however, that I completed undergrad just a few years before Napster became a thing. So I suppose it's easy to sound virtuous when, as a poor university student, I didn't have the option of illegal downloading. So I never got into it.*
Also, music and movies tend to be made available to me when I want them (e.g. an album usually - but not always - tends to be released in the same week in Canada as in the U.K.), so I am more willing to pay for the work.
But TV shows are another matter. The way broadcasters screw Canadian viewers with delays and inconsistent airings, no wonder so many shows are bittorrented (or, more recently, illegally streamed). I want to watch a new show when I am reading rave reviews about it from the U.S. or U.K., not 14 months later when Bell Media finally decides to air it randomly on one of its channels.
ETA: * I just realized this is a bit of a lie. A couple of years ago I torrented U2's Live from the Point Depot, which was a favourite album of mine in my 20s (I bought a bootleg in Poland, which I'd since lost). But the damn thing wasn't available legally - it had been briefly available on iTunes years earlier if one bought an entire U2 digital box set. Which I guess emphasizes my point - I'm happy to pay if the work is made available to me when I want it.
