I remember growing up it was insanely easy - Kazaa, Limewire, Napster - you just downloaded the client, searched for what you wanted and started the download.

Torrenting plus VPN/proxy has been standard for a while and is fairly straight forward. The motivation has changed rather than the access - all the content has fragmented between multiple paywalls again as the big media companies try to milk customers. And at the same time all the media companies are cutting back on content spending. So there is less good new stuff, more expensive to access and inconvenient as its spread more widely.