Given the technical restrictions on sharing illegal content, due to copyright laws shutdown of websites etc., sharing illegal content isn't that easy to do. That someone has managed to do it in as user friendly a manner as they have, putting everything in the industry to shame (apart from Netflix) is in an indication of the failings of the industry.
Netflix is a great product that falls down only in terms of content. If Netflix had more TV shows as box sets, and new episodes of currently being broadcast TV seasons, I would happily pay 10 times as much as I do (no exaggeration) and never use anything else legal or otherwise. The resistance that the established industry has to making deals to enable that sort of service is the reason that Popcorn Time can beat them.
So break one law instead of another. There's no advantage to a VPN versus TPB, and you're still ilegally downloading the show (since the licence for the mentioned websites state that it cannot be exported, etc).
Hollywood isn't in the moving bits around industry. That was never the hard part. It's like saying you improved Photoshop by making a cracked version that's easy to download.... Users might be happy, but imagine you work at Adobe.
That's not really true. The big studios are distributors of the content. They traditionally sold to Cinemas, and had DVDs made, etc. The fact they missed the boat on digital distribution is completely their fault...
> Netflix is a great product that falls down only in terms of content
...and app UI. Have you ever tried to drive your chromecast with the netflix app? It's buggy as hell, doesn't display comments, doesn't display related content, and has a horrible search experience. I half believe that it's bad deliberately as a way to cover up holes in their content.
Netflix is a great product that falls down only in terms of content. If Netflix had more TV shows as box sets, and new episodes of currently being broadcast TV seasons, I would happily pay 10 times as much as I do (no exaggeration) and never use anything else legal or otherwise. The resistance that the established industry has to making deals to enable that sort of service is the reason that Popcorn Time can beat them.