Depends. Sometimes I'll give it up all together. If I think it's worth it I'll buy it. Other times I thought it wouldn't be worth it and I pirate it and then I end up buying it afterwards. Other times I just wait for a steep discount/sale.

Depends. A while back, I was looking for an old, relatively obscure but unimportant album, and could only find one copy on eBay. It was only a couple bucks, so I bought it, ripped it, and uploaded it. Now it's preserved and available.

I also had an experimental EP album I downloaded from YouTube that I really enjoyed. At some point the author took it down, so I uploaded it to archive.org, again for preservation and availability. Later the author found it and commented something like "hey this is my work, what's it doing here", so I took it down. But I still have it and I'll put it back up when they stop making music.

If it was something easily available for a few bucks, I wouldn't publish it. Creators deserve compensation for their labor too. They need to eat. For something that they're charging way too much for, and they're not hurting for cash, especially if it's not easily available, yeah I wouldn't have a second thought about pirating and republishing it.

In your case, with the 99% availability, I'd try to complete the torrent and seed in any way possible. If that's not possible, I'd purchase and republish, filling in the missing files if possible or creating a new torrent if not.

If something is worth paying for I just do that up-front. (Outside of some exceptions where I actively don’t want to support the creator or license holder)

did it one textbooks one time, when i couldnt find it to pirate like 10 years ago. they were going hard against any newer versions before, and against the torrents/downloaders who were hosting the pirates.

I am far too poor to afford to buy shit. If I can’t pirate shit, I just do without. The only thing I pay for is music because they did it right. Mostly the same music on every platform. None of this exclusive bullshit. Plus it’s easier than piracy. Plus I listen to so much music

During college, I got all my books online Zlib or LibGen and the small amount of times i couldn't find any I'd pay someone who had a PDF copy as my last ditch effort.

I end up sometimes giving up on having the thing. Because sometimes it's an effect of just feeling personal greed.

But I will almost never give in and pay for the thing. Some things out there, aren't worth the price and even if the price was right, it's not worth the support.

Like Microsoft, I've not paid for a single Windows OS in my entire life. I've always gotten Windows second hand or buying machines off from people who happen to have the latest Windows on it.

Adobe, haven't paid a single penny for their Photoshop program, kept pirating.

Part of pirating is just wheeling and patience. You will eventually, one day, get what you seek.

so, usually if i can't find it through direct download or torrent, i might try asking around, or looking in open directories even, and if all of that fails i lay awake at night Really bothered

I give up on having that thing. I'm unemployed, I don't have any income at all. When I have a well paying job though I'd rather just pay, there are a lot of people I would like to support.

Give up. I never buy something I can't try out. There have been several games that caught my eye but were not available, and so I simply moved on

Depends on how expensive it is, what kind of license the paid version has, how willing I am to support the creator. Music I’ll try and get from bandcamp or failing that an actual cd from their site of I really must. TV I’ll usually just look harder and settle for a worse quality than I’d prefer.

When I was in college, often yes, as the "free" thing was typically a textbook I needed to actually pass a class.

Nowadays? Meh, I probably don't need that random movie that bad. I have so little time for entertainment that if I can't get it from a torrent site in a few minutes I just find something else.

Depends on the thing, how much money I have, and whether I think it's worth it for the price they're charging.

Like when I don't have time to make bread I just steal it from loblaws.

If it's a physical object, I do what i need to do. But I've developed the policy that I don't pay real money for unreal things. And anything I cannot experience with all five senses is unreal.

Really depends on what it is but I usually wait until there’s an good sale of said product.

For example;

• Persona 3 Reload. Can’t be cracked normally due to Denuvo, so waited until there was a decent sale and then bought it together with a Voucher. So I only costed me €15 instead of the full price.

• Stellar Blade has Denuvo too but I refuse to purchase it. Doesn’t have a good sale nor do I have any vouchers left.