My mate Dave used to be an online pirate, especially when it came to the latest TV series like Game of Thrones and Ray Donovan.

Dave is a DStv Premium subscriber, but he said that he previously had to wait for a week or longer after an episode premiered in the United States before it was available locally.

The Internet would be awash with spoilers long before the show would be available on DStv, which put South Africans at a severe disadvantage.

According to Dave, he purchased the premier content subscription service, but Torrent platforms still served his needs better.

He explained why he continued to pirate despite having a DStv Premium subscription: convenience, the immediate availability of content, and no advertisements during shows.

Dave argued that he legally paid for the content through his DStv subscription, but that the platform did not serve his content consumption needs adequately.

However, he started to change his behaviour over the last year. This was not a conscious or even moral decision, but rather a consequence of two things:

Dave bought himself a DStv Explora , which offers a large number of Catch Up shows.

, which offers a large number of Catch Up shows. DStv’s Express from the US, where popular TV shows are aired within 24 hours of their US premier.

When Dave arrived home after work and wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones, Suits, or Ray Donovan, it was available on his Explora in HD.

No need to fire up his Torrent box, look for a good copy on The Pirate Bay, and wait for it to download on his 4Mbps ADSL line.

DStv’s latest services offer Dave a convenient way to consume the content he loves, provides it to him in a timely manner, and removes advertisements.

Using DStv to watch TV shows is now easier and better than pirating, he said.

And to answer your questions: yes, Dave is a real person; he does not work for DStv; and since big torrents sites like KickassTorrents have gone down he has pirated a lot less media content. The article is an opinion piece.

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