Personally, I am not paying for it because it's not officially available in my country for whatever reason. I realize there's rights issues etc., but if someone won't take my money, I feel no guilt whatsoever doing whatever I want with their product.

I wondered the same thing when that New York Times article came up about people paying for News. They acted like the media can support themselves for free, just like artists. One way I differ from some HNers is that I like support good journalism and I like to support the my favorite music artists as well. I know music quality has gone down over the years since artists know they’re much less likely to strike it rich. I met some kids still in highschool and heck even they were listening to music from the early 2000s, 90s and 80s instead, surprisingly.

Seems to me a lot of hackers/tech people get off getting around paying for stuff, even if they make well over six figures.

This is the real issue here. If you can afford to be on hackernews, you can afford $10 a month. People just have cheapness deeply ingrained into their psyche as a pleasure response.