Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Being a poor elementary school kid who wanted to play the trendy singleplayer games.

I wanted to buy music, but a CD that I got in the 00's had some "protection" so that I couldn't rip it and listen to it on my MP3 player.

Now, I ripped it from a Linux computer and had no problems, but was so upset that the record companies tried this. I realized that it's not about right or wrong, but just about power and money.

Holy shit I also pirated DC talk hahaha. Wasn't allowed to listen to it .

What would people think of they hear that I'm sailing the high seas?

VB 6. We were learning it in school and I wanted to learn on my own as well. Spent a lot of time on IRC after that.

Ssi randomly stopped paying me

Wanted to play some games, didn't have money but I did know someone that knew someone that knew someone that ran a BBS that had some pirated games.

Yes, I'm that old.

I think the first thing I ever pirated was Cars. I was like 13, They didn't have a VHS for it at the library and our home internet at the time was too slow to even think about streaming, so I figured out how to torrent and it took like 6 days to get a complete copy of the movie.

I ended up sticking to pirating and pack packratting all the movie files locally specifically because our internet was so bad.

I was a teenager who wanted to be a 1337 haxxor so I found out what warez were, and then wanted to play a bunch of games for free.

I found a website that showed my how to use RSS feeds to automatically download TV shows. Having my favorite shows download automatically overnight was very convenient. There was no streaming services for TV shows back then and even if there was, my internet was way too slow for that. I had a portable media player with a massive 80GB hard drive that I could load my pirated TV shows and ripped DVDs on when I was away from home.

Originally, it was being a child and not having any money of my own, and my mom getting out her wallet to enter card information on a website she had no previous knowledge of, for something she would never use personally, was a whole... thing that I can probably count on my hands the number of times it actually happened. So I stopped even asking and figured it out myself.

Edit: also, we had netflix but sometimes the shows I wanted to keep up with were still airing and I couldn't wait.

Now, I just don't think any company that would take my money in exchange for, generally temporary, access to media/software really deserves or needs my money all that much, and especially not more than I do. I also strongly resent that there is not a public and legal domain for things that are older than like 5 or 10 years and not actively being worked on.

When I discovered soulseek and could stop paying $20-$30 per CD. Incidentally, I bought an iPod round the same time and couldn't copy my mp3s over, and that's the last time i ever bought an apple product

When my mom's old laptop became mine in around 2011 it wasn't even powerful enough to run Minecraft at more than 13 FPS, so I sure as shit wasn't gonna spend the occasional money I got on a steam card at 7/11 to load up an account I couldn't even use to play the games well with

I think every game I've ever pirated from childhood and actually liked enough to finish has been paid for now though

Just born to break the rules.

Young and didn't have any money. Certainly not enough to blow on movies or shows. Since then it's been a jumping off point into learning more and more about computers. Networks, data transfer, Linux, virtual machines. I'm looking to get some certifications and get into IT now, and I probably wouldn't have the knowledge to do so if I hadn't spent my years on the high seas.

When I was learning programming, free software for schools wasn't (officially) a thing yet.

Lots of folks pointedly looked the other way so I could have a home copy of the development environment I was learning.

Back then: The prices of shit and ease of procurement. Nowadays, I’ll buy reasonably priced software because I’m not a broke dick and like to have support if needed. Though, understandably, there’s still a lot of bullshit software that’s way too expensive. But I lean towards foss software when I can get away with it.

But for streaming/cable/satellite? I’d rather wipe my ass with that money. I’ll go to the theater if a movie looks good enough, just to change things up, but with so much awful shit being produced… nope.

I pay for music streaming on Deezer, but also have a carefully curated media library and run Nicotine 24/7 to share on slsk.

I guess it’s a toss up between money and principle. 🤷‍♂️

Basically as soon as I found out about it. I really got into it when I later discovered emulation. Never felt bad about it; I was pretty much only looking for games I literally could not buy because they could only be had via retailers, and they didn't always carry every title.

As a child my parents didn't want to give me their credit card (like fair enough), but so I had to find other ways.

Then payed for netflix for a while and was pretty happy with it. Since you have to have like 13 streamubg services of which only about half are available on my country I found Plex. Now I use Jellyfin and couldn't be happier.

My dad introduced me to Napster and Weird Al.

Availability, since I was a kid till today, most things are not available in my country. Convenience is a bonus. Price is a negative because my usenet/indexer cost is more than netflix/prime/disney and 2 more local services of my country.

Hmm, this is an interesting question, as I live in a 3rd world country it is hard to pinpoint exactly which event drove me to this beautiful world.

With that said, the first console that we ever had (sis and I) was a PS1, it came with Gran Turismo and DBZ Ultimate Battle 22, I think.

Anyway, I was probably 6 years old, and my dad took care of chip it (took it to a place, it is common to do that in Mexico) and then I got the pirated games for dirt cheap in flea markets and such, a similar event happened with the PS2.

But when I truly sailed the seas for myself, at least in a gaming scenario, happened when I got my Nintendo DS phat, I quickly knew about a R4, and managed myself to find ROM sites, homebrew, heck I used to use Windows Live Messenger in that little thing lol (DS Lite at that time).

I mean, I pirated software for PC and possibly burned some games for the PS1/PS2 before having the DS, but having unlimited portable fun with the DS (and then the PSP) was when I turned into a no return point.

Geographic restrictions. I live in Czechia. I can afford to pay for content and generally do if I can, but there is quite a lot of content I want that is not available via any content service whatsoever here. For that I sail the high seas.

Overpriced, privacy-invasive streaming services that require shitty proprietary software to use them

DLCs.

I first wanted a copy of miitopia. But didn't know atbrhe time. Then I just got some nodded apks and game roms

I really wanted to give Assassin's Creed Valhalla a try soon after it came out, as it had been a few years since I'd played any of the games. So I began looking into how I could get it for free.

I didn't really enjoy the game but what I discovered was much greater than just one game.

My uncle hooked me up with an R4 for my DS and 3DS.
The first software I remember pirating was Cinema4D.
I started my own media library with Jellyfin due to the increased fragmentation and price increases. Earlier I co-payed a netflix account with my friend.

But I still pay for my Spotify Account.

During my early years of life, my late father used to pirate a lot of movies. And my brother went to same path as my late father. Saved a lot of time and money.

Wanted to not pay for stuff. Still pirate movies and tv shows. Games not so much.

Exclusive sports deals, geo-blocking, and the general greed of streaming companies that just keep increasing their prices while you don't actually own anything.

My dad got into Kazaa in the mid-00s, then Limewire, before discovering Mininova and TPB. Just kinda saw what he was doing and thought it was interesting. (We were often told not to touch the computer as it'd "knock off his download"...)

I seem to recall one of the first things I pirated was... er, Pirates of the Caribbean, which I watched with my friends huddled round my laptop. Quality times.

Oh, you think seeders are your ally, but you merely adopted piracy as an adult. I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't pay for anything until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but expensive.

The peers betray you, because they belong to me. I will show you my torrent collection, whilst preparing to show you my ratio. Then I will set my upload speed limit to 0.

I'm very fond of DC Talk's So Long My Friend.

To answer your question, it was probably music that sent me sailing the high seas. The only way to get music back then was to tape songs off the radio, download them online or buy a bootleg CD off the street.

Otherwise you'd have a spend a tonne at the few music shops we have/had.

My parents were the ones who pointed me to the high seas. I was a kid (12-13yo) when Napster came out. Being the family geek, they told me to look into it since they heard about it on the news and wanted free music (early case of the Streissand Effect before it was termed as such). So I did. And we got free music. Even asked them to get me a CD burner for my birthday after that and they did.

As a kid on the earlier days of the Internet, I came across all sorts of ways to get free stuff. Games and Music at first, especially game cracks/warez. Then once torrents came on the scene, movies and shows.

I actually don't pirate much anymore. Rarely pirate music since I've had Spotify for like 10+yrs now. Same with games since Steam and all the other digital storefronts have so many sales. I still pirate emulator ROMs once in a blue moon. Movies/shows would be where I pirate the most (though like once a month if that), even though I have Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll. Even between those 4, I can't find everything I want to watch.

But yeah, 99% of the time, I just don't want to pay for things. The other 1% is that I can't pay for something (mainly in the emulators/ROMs space). That's all.

When I was barely a teenager my dad used to buy me games and 3d software (I wanted to make games and animations) at the flea market. There was a guy who cracked and sold software for a living. It's a family tradition ! I fully intend to pass it down too

Earliest example of me pirating was when my dad used Limewire. I'd like to think I used it as well, but I doubt it since I wouldn't have known anything to look up.

Otherwise, in highschool I would go to different sites to find cartoons/anime that weren't available on Netflix (or Hulu back when it was just about the only competitor). This was before I knew what sites were safe, so I probably ended up getting viruses without knowing.