I find this window politically acceptable.

Since tape trading, for me. Don’t invent the means to copy the media if you don’t want the media copied.

The Teenage Engineering vinyl cutter goes for something like $150 for a little portable home machine that makes 5" discs.

I don’t remember seeing pirated stuff before Dreamcast / PS1, although to be fair, I was at a lot of PC conventions back then grabbing freeware disks and stuff, so I probably saw a lot of pirated stuff without knowing what I was looking at, just by virtue of being too young to be into the pirating / modding community.