I remember the IRC channels where you would interact with channel bots to have them list what they had available. You'd make a selection, possibly end up in a queue, and then start downloading at 56k.

Honestly, none of it felt like or was treated as piracy. You were just sharing games (a physical thing you lent your friend). Even the game manual anti-piracy stuff was just treated like something you needed to work around. Your friends would just write down a few examples (like pg 43, line 26, word 12 = "punisher") and just retry until that question was asked.