I remember growing up it was insanely easy - Kazaa, Limewire, Napster - you just downloaded the client, searched for what you wanted and started the download.

Torrenting plus VPN/proxy has been standard for a while and is fairly straight forward. The motivation has changed rather than the access - all the content has fragmented between multiple paywalls again as the big media companies try to milk customers. And at the same time all the media companies are cutting back on content spending. So there is less good new stuff, more expensive to access and inconvenient as its spread more widely.

Bananas. I'm not saying it's hard now, but it used to be insanely easy to pirate. Everyone I know my age had a PC full of pirated films and music just searching directly on Kazaa or limewire without having ever even heard of terms like "VPN."

I don't know. I used to pirate like crazy. It was ridiculously easy. I wouldn't even know where to begin today when it's more important to protect yourself than it was back then. As far as I know at least, due to new laws etc.