Asklemmy

For TV shows, I am just fed up with stuff not being available in my country. If you don’t want to sell it to me, I’m not going to pay. Or all the studios having their own streaming services. I pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime. Those were supposed to be the new Blockbuster kind of thing, if you want to fragment the market so much that I’d be paying close to a hundred dollars then it’s simply not something I’d could buy anyway. So if I’m not able to afford it I can just pirate, no customer lost. Also, because it’s fucking easy and often more convenient than streaming services.

As a fledgeling author, I could only be so lucky and actually get my poor excuse for work pirated: free publicity and a sure way to reach another potential reader ~~market~~ public.

There is no such thing as piracy (in this context). No such thing as "intellectual property". There are only copyright, trademark, and patent. And I violate them like a Thanksgiving Turkey.

I pirate mostly out of convenience, I just want access to whatever media I'm interested in and if there's a subscription wall between it and me, then more often than not it's just easier for me to pirate it than bothering to pay for it

If I can access ALL content from a provider for a reasonable monthly price then I'd happily do it.

But no, we can't have nice things. I'm watching a show and halfway through the show is removed. Now what? Well, you can now watch it from this other provider, just pay extra!

Fuck that.

I pirate because i want to own something. For example, if i buy a physical book or cd, its mine forever. i can make digital copies for myself to archive or enjoy on different devices, this is legal. if i pay the same price for a digital copy, i am buying the temporary privilege of enjoying the media in the format that they specify for thw time period that the seller has a license to distribute, before i understood this, i spent good money on digital goods that just went away, furthermore, i had bought books and tapes and cds that were destroyed by time, rain, a flood, etc. i feel i am just exercising my rights and getting what i am entitled to. and fuck the big companies that shit on the actual producers to make money copying bits and bytes.

Intellectual property isn't real, it's a self-contradicting concept. Thus, it is impossible to steal it, just like it's impossible to poach a unicorn. If you had the magical ability to point to an object and clone it, that wouldn't be stealing either.

I only pirate things from large corpos. I don't pirate stuff from indie developers or small artists. I usually buy some merch from them too so they get some extra money, I try hard to support the little folks.

There are rare times where I feel that big time developers deserve my money, like No Man's Sky. Indie devs that made it huge, screwed their fans when the game dropped initially, but have redeemed themselves fully by being honest, transparent, and providing incredible value since their flop to their customers.

I bought their game even though I don't really play it, just to show my support of a game Dev studio that truly cares about their players and product.

TL;DR support the small-time folks, screw the corpos.

I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can't get something through my library. I don't watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it

I don’t pirate anymore, it’s more convenient for me to purchase in most cases, but I fully support the right of anyone to pirate anything, and in the few cases where I can’t find what I’m looking for I have no qualms with trying to pirate it. P2P file sharing is honestly the coolest part about the entire internet. Social Media, Web 2.0, it’s all mediocre compared to the absolute wonder that is p2p file sharing. Lemmy and other decentralized non-crypto web 3 projects are the first time I’ve been excited about the internet since I discovered p2p 20 or so years ago, and it’s because it feels like an evolution in peer to peer community. I hope one day we don’t have to rely on centralized servers too because p2p finds a way to have paper light websites run distributed across everyone’s devices.

1. Yeah, sometimes.

2. I justify it if it's me getting free stuff from rich and greedy game dev companies, publishers, streaming services, large record companies, etcetera. They were never going to see my money anyways, so it's not like they are losing any money (despite the fact they claim that they lose money from people who were never gonna buy their products in the first place).

3. Again, they were never gonna see my money, so why should I care so long as I don't get caught? Hell, even if piracy somehow became impossible, they'd still never see my money. With music, it's more complicated since I usually just download songs off of YT to listen to on my phone or desktop.

Though, I will say that I will never buy into music streaming since I cannot say with certainty that whoever I'm listening to will get even a percent of a percent of a penny off me listening, while the service gets pretty much 100% of the profit and leaves the artists in the dust.

I believe all information should be free. Be it of cultural or academic importance no one deserves to be left out because capitalism screwed them. If the system cannot adequately compensate the people that make they should change the system or stop making the thing. I make my pirating decisions with that in mind. The vast majority of movies and tv I would rather not exist than exist only for the rich so I pirate it.

Personally, I've been boycotting plenty of things during the years because of the crusade against piracy. If Big Media is spending so much effort into ensuring that people that can't pay don't have access to their works, then fine, I'll boycott those works just to prove their actual point - that what they want is to earn more money, not to have their artwork locked in a box due to lack of buyers.

I pirate old stuff and overpriced stuff permanently. I refuse to pay an ebay seller $200 for an old GameCube game and I refuse to pay $700 dollars for all the Sims 4 dlc. You may also catch me pirating movies and shows as I strongly dislike subscription models.

My friend only pirates 80€ games to try them out before buying.

Tv and movies: streaming services have buggy and badly developed apps, random connection issues and sometimes shitty quality because of browsers DRM madness (looking at you Prime Video). Regular televion has too much ads. If I want to see something comfortably sometimes it's just better to browse your folder of .mp4, in full quality and with no interruptions.

Games: either 2000s era games you literally cannot buy anymore or games that keep releasing broken and unfinished remasters and enhanced versions and that pump up so many DLCs you would end up broke to have a somewhat complete experience. Or games you can buy but with the original price and that are more maintaned by the community than the developers (looking at you 25€+DLC codMW2 full of hackers with iw4x servers working perfctly)

I still buy physical media every now and then as gifts or to collect, but generally it just doesn't make sense to pay for data that can be freely and easily copied. I need that money for things that aren't freely and easily copied.

When Netflix went viral, things were nice, all the content I wanted to watch was pretty much there, for an affordable price.

Then it all went to shit with geolocking and everyone having their shitty streaming service.

I liked how on Netflix you could initially change language and subtitles, then for some pretty fucking stupid reason they decided to remove languages and subtitles, so I went back to the bay.

Regarding games, it's pretty messed up how Mexico is the most expensive country in the world to buy games, steam normally increases the price up to 75% more than the base price.

Just for context, in my state the average monthly personal income is around $7k MXN which is around $400 USD

Starfield premium edition was being sold for $135 USD. Imagine paying more than a third of your monthly income just to play a bugged ass Bethesda game.

My rule of thumb is this: if I perceive that the IP I want, was created by an individual who must have spent their blood sweat and tears creating it, I'll pay for it to encourage that work. If, on the other hand I'm being made to pay extra for something just because there's a queue of corporations that just want to profit for providing something made by others, I pirate it as a form of protest. As an example, I'll gladly pay for an ebook being distributed through an author's website even if I'm not sure I'm going to like it. But I will not pay for a cable subscription just to be able to watch sports programs. Another example: I've paid money for mobile games when I see a lot of effort being spent in making the gameplay engaging, but I will delete or try to cheat or pirate games that I perceive as pay-to-win.

I pirate movies because they split content into multiple streaming service with separate prices. And some of those are not available in my area.

I pay for music streaming because the service is easy, wherever you go, the content is almost the same, so you won't miss any content or if any it's minimal. It will just go down to what service preference you would like.

I pirated console games in the past before digital, because some of the games were not available in our area. Now it's easy to purchase so I wait for a sale and purchase.

I buy knockoff items if it's cheap and unimportant. I buy legit items if it's important and I need quality and after sales support.

Yes, I mostly pirate anime and some live action. I was saddened by the closure of RARBG, I used to torrent from there daily. Nowadays I mostly use Nyaa and 1337x, Nyaa for anime and 1337x for live action and other animation. I pay for Spotify premium, YT Premium, and Amazon Prime. I use Steam to purchase video games.

Piracy via torrenting is my preferred way for watching series or movies, I just want the mkv files, I don't care for the BD menus, UI, bloopers & extras, buffering, etc. I remember trying Netflix a few years back and noticed that some content wasn't available for offline viewing. I also don't have to worry about things like licenses expiring meaning the streaming service no longer has the right to have it in their catalog or the drm in Blu-ray discs.

I think piracy exists in a gray area like "illicit" drugs among other things and labeling or moralizing it as either good or bad paints it with a broad brush traps and confines it to a dichotomy that we really should look beyond. Heck, even services like Crunchyroll and Napster(Rhapsody) started off as piracy sites before they legitimized. Piracy also has benefits like preserving content from being lost due to it being out of print or licensing issues that limit sale or access. Old games can be played again by using emulators and roms.

Personally, I've become more technologically literate through piracy. I started off with apps like PopcornTime and sites like Kissanime, 9anime, and Putlocker. I used to exclusively stream or use direct downloads until I discovered torrenting. I used to use UTorrent until I discovered Fosshub and Qbitorrent. Most of content I've torrented I've yet to watch so I'm more of a data hoarder. I have multiple external hard drives filled with data. I don't thinking purchasing would've made me more likely to watch the content I've watched as I've purchased many physical books that I have yet to read.

Imo the term piracy means the unauthorized tampering/modification, access, and distribution of a product or service. That also poses the question whether or not consumers actually own what they buy. Piracy fights back against anti-consumer practices such as DRM which has been around since 1983. Also I'd say that corpos have gone way overboard with their anti-piracy measures when they can prosecute and extradite individuals.

I'll end with this video, "Why We Should Get Rid Of Intellectual Property.

I pirate when getting a copy of something is otherwise too inconvenient and/or ridiculously overpriced and I REALLY need to watch it. I used to pirate basically everything. Nowadays very often I will wait for and then rent a movie on iTunes because that is the most convenient way and the price is fine. My FOMO is not as strong anymore. I also rarely watch any series that is not on a streaming service.

If its region locked i pirate it. I just cant be bothered to look for a vpn that's not blocked by this site. Alao if site is a shit i pirate it ,in my case crunchyroll . I really tried using it but Its just not working with my shitty internet and the buffer size is too small to load whole wideo while i do other stuff. YouTube and Netflix somehow works on my internet.

I'll pirate anything I have owned but for various reasons I now can only license so all my old games I bought I'll have ROMs of as well as albums whose labels no longer exist or are not in circulation such as obscure Punk tracks.

I live outside the US market. As a rule I'll pay for whatever content is legally available in my country (netflix, disney+, steam etc) however there are certain publishers and/or content which is simply not offered through any channel. At that point they aren't going to see $ from me in any case, so I may as well pirate.

It's the ease of use for me. Arrs + usenet + plex is an unbeatable combo.

So let's say you want to buy a painting for your house. You've got a few options. You can go online, look at various items and choose to buy it. You could go to a gallery, look around and decide to buy whichever one suits you.

But crucially, you get to what you're buying before you commit to the ownership. You may not own the rights to the paintings (its probably a print), but you know what you're getting. Why would I pay for a movie if I don't know whether or not it's worth it.

Netflix, Hulu, amazon, etc. Are like galleries. They have an entrance fee and that's ok. But what most of them don't have anyway for me to actually buy a copy. Netflix movies require you to pay month over month to maintain access. So you are forever required to go to their gallery.

Like your friend, I'll pirate to watch a movie and if I like it, then I'll buy it. I try to buy physical discs, but they are becoming more and more rare. I pirate because I want ownership. Subscription models work because they are more convenient than physical purchases. But that convience is getting smaller every day.

There is a few reasons why I want physical copies. License deals expire and thus the content may disappear from the service it's on. My internet may be out. Yes, I can download, but that requires inconvenient forethought and you're always limited in the number of downloads and quality of those downloads. Having a large collection of movies in my home means I'm never without option.

Basically, I pirate because I'm not going to buy something that I don't know if I want it, and because I'm a doomsday prepper who has no other option 90% of the time.

Games, no. Honestly, my limit at this stage of life is time and energy to play them. As a kid, I'd have boxes of pirate floppies and CDs.

I have Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime subscriptions. All three have taken a quality nosedive. Amazon shoves ads in, Disney gets little added apart from it's own releases, and Netflix struggles to get anything before the others.

I've recently started using the streaming pirate sites just because there's more choice. Not just for new movies, but things like Children of the Corn, or Timecop. Older stuff that really should be on one of those three services, but isn't.

It's become a service problem. Everyone wants to run their own streaming service, nobody really has the content to justify it, it's now even more fragmented than cable and satellite were.

They need to take a hint from the music industry. Every service there has just about everything.

My opinion on piracy is extremely dependent on what is being pirated.

Pirating a game published by EA, made by a studio that hasn't existed for twenty years? Go right ahead, the people that made the game won't see any money either way and EA fucked them over anyway.

Pirating a new game from an indie studio that is asking a fair price? Yeah that isn't cool imo.

I started pirating because it was the default for me. I was a young child and I had access to the family computer I had no money so I learned how to pirate before I learned how to buy games also piracy is real popular in my country because its poor af. Later on I became political and relized mega corps didn't need my money, lots of other people were throwing their money into these bottomless pits anyway. About indie games I try to buy them but since I now am a teenager with no money and in a lot poorer country I tend to pirate them anyway even though its wrong

Depends.

Sometimes I just can't find the actual thing by legal means. Go try listening to Bruce Woolley's version of "Video Killed The Radio Star" sometime. I can either try to hunt down a physical copy or I can just pirate it. See also: most video game soundtracks.

Usually though it's more about convenience. If I can just stream something on Spotify, I'll just do that.

If there's a movie I kinda wanna see but I'm not sure if it's going to be good I'll pirate it

It's capitalism, the free market at work.

1. It's copying and not stealing, and honestly current copyright law is stupid and broken
2. Decreasing the profits of big corporations like Hollywood movie studios is not immoral and shouldn't be illegal
3. There are some shows or movies I can't find in my country legally
4. With increased competition in the streaming market, it costs as much as a cable subscription to get all the content I used to be able to get from one streaming service

Yes, I pirate. But I don't justify it. 🤷‍♂️

Any case where I do pirate my philosophy is “Man I tried as hard as I could to give you guys money for this but you didn’t make any way for me to do so”

I've been emulating for years, but the first and only game I've pirated is Starfield, because I was certain the game wasn't worth the asking price and I wasn't going to shell out $70 and risk a 2 hour time limit on the refund with a studio that's infamous for long intros.

Turns out I was right, and I've already deleted it. If at some point in the far future the modders make something good of it, I will buy it at a heavily discounted 'GOTY Starborn splappy boom blappy edition Mk VII' price.

You cannot steal what is not physical. Theft implies removing a physical object from somewhere, creating a loss of an item.

Digital information is 1s and 0s, and you just create a copy. You do not remove the original one. There is no theft taking place.

The value of a product does not go down because I didn't pay for it. If anything, if it's a quality product, the value goes up. If I pirate something and enjoy it, chances are I will pay for it when I can afford to. If I pirate something and don't enjoy it, well, I wasn't going to buy the product anyway so there's no loss. Let's say I watch a movie at a friend's house and absolutely hate it. I do not buy the movie. How is that different than pirating it and coming to the same conclusion? I see the movie without paying money.

I pirate what I can't get by reasonable means within my boundaries.

I pay for three streaming providers constantly. If the one series I want to watch is on a fourth provider, they can fuck off and I'll just download it. Same if the offering gets moved out of a provider I use (because their license expired or whatever).

Games I typically don't pirate, since Steam is just too damn convenient. Epic Exclusives though... well, if possible I just avoid them.

Most books can be bought via Kindle store so that's also convenient and I just do that.

Music is basically close to equal on all streaming providers so I am mostly good with that. If something isn't I either buy them on beatport or just rip them off youtube (so pirate).

I basically live GabeN's theory: piracy is a service problem. Give to me without having to bend over and I gladly pay. Try to fuck with me and I shrug my shoulders and go elsewhere.

Not at all. This is not a moral judgement about anyone else. Just answering the question.

I guess I've reached a point in my life where I can easily afford to buy something if I want it, especially in the price range of a video game or book. I used to do all that stuff, not to get back at the man, but because it was the only option that was accessible. Eventually the hassle factor of piracy kept going up while just paying for it became an accessible choice.