I used to think paying for defeats the purpose too. But the super fast, easy access to everything and not having to worry about maintaining a ratio anywhere, I am now happy to pay a little something, it’s nowhere near $100 per year for me. From what I understand with private trackers now, you’re going to need pay for a seedbox to keep a decent ratio or seed forever with a home connection. I don’t have the disk space to seed forever, so I pay for usenet.
And I would much rather pay what I am paying every year rather than spending the time to rent and rip the hundreds of hours of movies and tv I download.