That’s certainly one way to pirate. However that still leaves you at the whims of whoever is hosting that content. The content might be removed or the entire service could shut down at any time and you’d had to scramble for a new source (which isn’t THAT bad, I did that for many years … but the move to self-hosting really felt like “growing up”).

Now downloading is really one of the most important aspects of my setup these days as it ensures that nothing is ever removed from my service (unless I do so myself). Plex also provides a pretty interface and features like playlists, keeping track of progress and watch history, intro/credit skipping, automatic audio/subtitle selection and other “premium” streaming service features that most random pirate sites won’t have.