> If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult.
The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).
The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).