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2017 Guide to Cord-Cutting - Episode 1: The "Free" content

As a TV cord-cutter, I have gone mostly legit.  One of my G+ buddies Keith Wilson , posted an article recently showing the drastic reduction in bittorrent traffic over the course of a decade.  His question was, what happened to all the pirates???  I have never believed that content piracy was about a lifestyle or philosophy.  It's always been about ease of content acquisition.  The classic example is pre-2000 Napster vs post-2010 Spotify.  At it's peak, OG Napster was king of the pirate apps and there were virtually no legal alternatives.  Today, pirating albums is trivially easy, but the vast majority of music consumers buy from iTunes or stream from Spotify.  Why?  Because the legal options are abundant and pervasive.  Spotify works on my phone, car, home and work with zero friction and benefits like social sharing features, playlists and such. It's taken a while, but TV has reached a similar nexus.  Barely five years ago, cord-cutting was synonymous with piracy.  One of