In the last decade, more and more people have been sharing files and it has hurt the entertainment industry greatly.  People are selling less and less music in stores and movies are making a lot less money because people can just stay at home and watch pirated copies before the movies are even out of theatres.  It's a bad thing to do, but it's a great way to entertain yourself without reaching for your wallet.
It can all be rather overwhelming to download and burn media that has been shared through "friends."  It is always a lot more difficult to find things for free, but many people in the file sharing community think it's worth it.  There's also a lot of help out there if you need it.  Many forums and chat rooms are dedicated to help those in need with downloading the right program or getting the right format.  Buying the right kind of archival DVD is also important if you want to transfer data from your computer.  
Now burning DVDs and other movies onto disks can be a little bit tricky, but as long as you have the correct format and the right equipment, it becomes quite simple and extremely cheap.  Many people were renting movies from video stores and ripping the movie right off the DVD before they returned it.  It wouldn't ruin the original copy in any way and it was undetectable.  So instead of paying twenty dollars for a movie you wanted, you would pay around five dollars to rent it and another dollar to buy the Verbatim DVD R disk so you could burn the movie onto it so you could watch it on your DVD player.  
For almost as long as I've been watching movies and listening to music, it has been quite possible for me to simply get it from someone else who was nice enough to post his or her copy on the internet.  When it was first available through sites and programs like Napster or Kazaa, there were no laws written to stop friends from letting other friends borrow their music or movies free of charge.  Of course almost everyone who used these programs didn't know each other and they were basically borrowing and never returning the media.  If you wanted to share your newly acquired free media with your real friends, you could just use blank DVD disks to distribute your data.  So this is why pirating music and movies has been going on for the better part of twenty years.

Caitlina Fuller is a freelance writer. If you wanted to share your newly acquired free media with your real friends, you could just use blank DVD disks to distribute your data.  So this is why pirating music and movies has been going on for the better part of twenty years.  You would pay around five dollars to rent it and another dollar to buy the Verbatim DVD R disk so you could burn the movie onto it so you could watch it on your DVD player.