Piracy Isn’t a Crime, It’s Infrastructure (If You Grew Up in Nigeria)
The African dilemma
🎧 Music of the Day: Sauti Sol – Tujiangalie
"Hii nchi si ya watu wachache..."
A soundtrack for everyone who ever sideloaded justice into their machine.
Have you ever downloaded a movie at 20 kb/s overnight and watched it the next day like it was gold?
Then this one is for you.
Let me say it loud so everyone in Silicon Valley, the WTO, and Adobe can hear it:
Piracy isn’t a crime. It’s infrastructure.
At least it was for me and damn near everyone I grew up with in Nigeria.
We didn’t pirate because we were anarchists.
We pirated because the world didn’t give us access any other way.
Growing Up on Pirate Internet
No Netflix. No Amazon Prime.
Spotify? Not available in your region.
Textbooks? $400 for a PDF with no font kerning.
Dev tools? Trial version. Expired.
So what did we do?
Searched "Adobe Photoshop CS6 + crack" on Google like it was StackOverflow.
Installed FIFA 07 from a CD someone bought in Computer Village for ₦150.
Learned Python from a pirated O’Reilly book passed around like contraband.
Got an entire degree running pirated MATLAB on a Core i3.
That wasn’t rebellion.
That was survival.
The West Calls It Theft. We Call It Tuesday.
You grew up in a country where the minimum wage is ₦30,000/month.
And you expect people to pay ₦150,000/year for Microsoft Office?
Be for real.
In Nigeria, piracy isn’t a moral dilemma.
It’s just... what you do to function.
Want to watch a movie that isn't on terrestrial TV?
You go to that corner shop. You know, the one flash drive-ready. ₦300 per movie.
Want to edit photos for your small biz?
Photoshop 2019. Unofficial. Pre-cracked. Works fine.
This wasn’t about being cheap.
It was about being locked out by default by pricing, region locks, bad infrastructure, or just being born on the wrong side of the world.
Nobody Talks About the Pirates That Taught Us
You know what’s wild?
Some of the best documentation I’ve seen in my life came from pirate forums.
People are reverse-engineering licensing issues, debugging bad installers, helping total strangers in broken English, and using cracked software.
They weren’t in it for clout.
They weren’t selling SaaS.
They were just helping others get sh*t working in a system that never included them.
Pirates gave us access.
Corporations gave us error messages.
You Want Us to Be Lawful, But You’re Not Fair
Let’s do the math:
Adobe: $59.99/month
Netflix + Spotify + Disney+: $70+
Academic journal behind a $30 paywall
Textbooks: $500
Apps with subscriptions just to export a PDF
And you’re surprised piracy exists?
We would’ve paid.
If we could.
If it made sense.
If you even let us.
Real Talk: Piracy Is a UX Problem
You know what’s easier?
Opening VLC and dragging in your
.mp4Running
pip installon a cloned GitHub repoReading a PDF from ZLibrary
Using the pre-cracked setup from “CracksNow” instead of the official installer that crashes mid-way
Meanwhile, legitimate apps want:
Your email
Your phone number
Your location
Your grandmother’s maiden name
And they still won’t let you download unless you “update your billing info.”
Bro. Just let me rotate this image and export it.
Final Word from a Reformed (but Not Remorseful) Pirate
Look. I get it now.
I’m an engineer. I’ve worked on products.
I understand what it costs to build something.
But I also understand what it costs to exclude people.
So yeah, I pirated.
And I don’t regret it.
Because without piracy, I wouldn’t be here.
No tools. No exposure. No skills. No career. Just vibes and Windows Media Player.
Piracy didn’t make me a criminal.
It made me capable.
So the next time someone says piracy is stealing, ask them:
"Cool, then why did the official thing never even let me in?"