Do you pirate? And do you justify pirating? i.e., what is your piracy philosophy?
Well, my friend, he's kinda poor he can't afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don't understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the author or just wants to skim through it, he will download the book.
He usually doesn't like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it's the right move to pirate
Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn't pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.
He says he will buy stuff when his time is more valuable than money, let's all hope that day is soon.
What are your piracy habits?
I don't have an answer to your exact question but I want to emphasize...
NOTHING in the history of humankind has ever existed like computer data. A 100% identical copy of videos, pictures, and music can be made almost instantly at what is essentially zero cost to the original holder of the data. Any comparison to "stealing" or to a physical object (a car lol) just falls flat because the situation is just so different.
Practically speaking, the world we live in, with computers everywhere, cheap storage, and easy fast internet access for so much of the world, has only been around for about two decades, maybe three. NOTHING like this has ever existed before, and businesses, culture, and laws have been very slow to catch up.
I'm not saying pirating is right or wrong, just that the whole idea is still so new that society hasn't caught up to it yet.
In
BabylonAlexandria, docking ships were required to surrender any and all written materials to the library. There, scribes would make a copy of everything that was submitted.The originals of the documents were stored in the library and the copies were given back to the ships.
First instance of intellectual property piracy?
Perhaps, but of course there are still significant differences.
To make these copies you needed a team of highly skilled scribes and their accoutrements, and the ship had to wait in port for several days.
That is to say, these copies in babylon would have come at a significant cost.
I thought that was Alexandria?
Yes. You are correct and I am a dumbass.
YES!
Nice comment, tq!
thats a super copey way to say you pirate and dont see it as wrong. digital or not its still a product so the rules are the same.
of course the rule being pirate from big companies and try to not pirate indie stuff (unless ur a poor college student)
i pirate all my games and movies generally but i would pay if i liked a game a lot. but piracy is bad for the sole reason of if everyone pirated hypothetically then digital content would likely cease to exist which would also be bad. or maybe not if ur amish
Digital content wouldn't cease to exist, it just wouldn't be able to be monetised.
The content would once again be made by the people who are passionate about those projects, and not about the greedy shareholders that want mediocre content just enough to get people to pay for it and line their own pockets.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Even if I pay for a product I love some asshole suit is going to get a bigger cut than the artists who did the work.
I'm an indie author, and all my novels ended up on PDFdrive.
Not that I'd be mad about it. If someone pirates my books and likes them, maybe they'll support me in the future.
Just saying, I'm not wearing suits. I'm working full-time and write when I have off and got the time and energy.
For us Indies, getting eyeballs on our books is next to impossible anyways, so I already gave up on the idea that writing will ever be more than an expensive hobby.
Yep! Often the math is "the people who pirated probably wouldn't have bought your product if they couldn't pirate it, so you didn't lose anything. But you did gain a reader, who can now recommend it to others, and / or make future purchases themselves". Generally speaking, pirating isn't bad to the bottom line (not saying it's good).
It hurts brick and mortar stores, but then, so do libraries. (Hah)
I've always been of the opinion that people who truly love what they piratesd will at some point want the author to carry on writing. Just like someone who just stumbled upon your work by accident. That's the beauty of humanity, people do remember, and they do care, and creative arts are a pursuit that connects author and reader.
libraries are not comparable to what damage piracy does to brick and mortar stores and small authors
Piracy does not damage at all compared to the damage monopolized america is doing to them.
That was a joke about how much capitalists hate socialist libraries.
If we had any sense as a species we would be funding artists so that they can pursue their art full time. Industry advances technology, but art advances the mind.
We might end up like people who do graphics... replaced by AI tools. There aren't any that make it as easy yet (and maybe there won't), but who knows where tech will lead us.
If you do it as a hobby, you don't need to worry about it so much, but it does take something away for sure.
Just like the invention of the camera stopped people painting portraits.
AI will change the game, but I think after an initial period of growing pains that we're really facing a shift in the economy whether we're ready or not. All of the "problems" of capitalism have been due to runaway efficiency. A scarcity economy is absurd when we're infinitely capable of producing everything people want or need.
I agree, and the optimist in me desperately wants to experience a post-scarcity society like the one we're seeing in the The Culture books, where AIs run the world, and we humans are free to chase whatever it is we're dreaming of.
Maybe that's a romantic notion, but I'm hesitant to give up on in. Dreams are what's kept us going for the past millennia.
You might become bored and depression does seem to be more common when you do not have a particular sense of purpose.
I like the idea as well but human psychology might not be so conductive to easy living.
You mean, being forced to find your own meaning instead of just going down a socially acceptable to-do list?
Boredom is simply a lack of imagination and drugs.
What do you mean when you say we need a purpose?
We are biologically designed to reproduce. So our current purpose is to survive until we're grown to sexual maturity, reproduce, then raise our offspring to a stage where they're able to survive on their own. Then, we either do it again, if we're still young enough, or die and make room for the next generation. That seems like a very depressing purpose to me, but this is how evolution works.
I think that we now have the intellectual capacity to transcendent this cycle. We've been for a while, and we formed societies, developed technology. Our first models were small tribes, very much hippie-like little communities, that suffered from attrition by tribe warfare and rule of the strongest, where reproduction was controlled by "the fittest". Then we developed monarchic systems that provided a much more stable life for everyone, but ran on servitude (slavery) of peasants. We experimented with systems like communism, that then lead to terror by the ruling class (can still see that in China today), and landed on a somewhat democracy-adjacent system of capitalism that we're running today, and that's not sustainable, because we're destroying our planet.
What's next, and what purpose for the individual do you have in mind?
I am sorry to hear that. If it ended up on pdf drive, then I guess it's either that, enough people want to read it or pdf drive has a bot which is ruthlessly uploading all the books it can find. Have you tried self publishing on kindle? Also, name your books if you want to, it looks like some eyeballs and popularity will do you some good.
I tried on Kindle, but the reality is that every day, a six-digit number of books are being released, which leads to insane odds.
I wrote cyberpunk/urban fantasy crossover books, but am now switching over to space opera. If you're still interested, I can give you the title of the "entry book" that starts the story.
Shadowrun?
No, I'm not writing Shadowrun, but the genre has some similarities.
Just curious --- why do you consider writing to be an expensive hobby? I mean, it's totally expensive from an opportunity cost perspective, but wouldn't any hobby be? Is it the cost to get it published somewhere?
If you just write for yourself, it only costs time. If you plan to (*self-) publish it, though, you want at least a good cover, and optimally, you'd hire an editor and maybe things like sensitivity readers. And then, most people seem to prefer audio books these days, which is either expensive, or hard to pull off, due to having to find a narrator who's okay with royalty share with a non-established author. And then you haven't advertised your book at all yet.
I've so far only worried about cover and editing. Wrote 4 novels. Now I'm writing a series and am considering writing the whole thing completely first, then getting a deal with an artist for all the covers. This also makes it easier to do foreshadowing properly over the course of more than one book, and it's probably advantageous to stagger book releases, even if that means a few years without putting anything out to the world.
*All these points are moot if you aim to get published by an established house, but then you're dealing with "the suits", and people who rank "will it sell" higher than "is it good".
How expensive does editing and cover art get? I imagine it’s pretty pricey to hire people to do that. You mention this is moot going the traditional publishing route — I guess because publishers will front the costs for these things if they think your book will sell? If you’re buying cover art and stuff to self-publish, where do you publish your novels? Do you sell print copies, or is it all digital? Is selling physical copies even feasible without a traditional publisher?
The cover costs anywhere from USD 100 to 1000, depending on the artist and the cover, where 100 would get you a somewhat decent one on Fiverr, while something not generic can go up in price very quickly. Most "cheap" artists have a flat rate with one or more stock image sites, where you'd then pick a model and tell them what setting you'd like to have. If you have very specific needs that would require hand crafting, the sky is your limit (The covers for ebook, print and audiobook are separate, and print/audiobook covers will cost extra).
Editors come in categories. Developmental editors check the characters and plot for consistency, logic problems and structural things. Then there are copywriting editors that focus mainly on things like grammar, spelling etc and, while being a bit cheaper, still cost quite a lot (Which is why people use tools like grammarly or pwa to self-edit, which basically saves you the copy editor).
Sensitivity and beta readers are tricky. If you already have a fan community, you might be able to recruit some of them for this purpose. You'd want them to avoid faux pas when describing people of another ethnicity, sex, gender etc, and there are professional options for that, too (I already suspect my current project might not be fireproof, because names like Born Of Rain remind Americans of natives, even though they're completely unrelated to my story -- there aren't even humans in my book).
Audiobook narration can go way, way up. You might be able to negotiate royalty share with a new voice actor who needs gigs to build skills and a portfolio, but nobody wants to spend hours every day for weeks in a recording booth if there's no money to be made, and therein lies the problem -- you need exposure to sell your books and make some money back, but exposure doesn't come for free. While less and less people read books, they do listen to audiobooks, which would increase your chances of being seen drastically.
Newcomers don't usually have a backlog of ten books, with lots of positive reviews, but most people don't buy books from some dude with two books and zero reviews. They also don't buy books that don't have a nice cover, and they demand the professional quality you're getting from having your book edited by an expert. Some genres also just sell better in general, like romance or thriller (to a lesser extent).
If you go with just a cheap Fiverr cover and some basic copywriter editing, you're already looking at approximately 1 grand, with sales extremely unlikely, unless you have a platform somewhere with a related following (you often see book-related youtubers advertising their books during their videos). For someone like me, who has 3 books out (Out of 4 -- I pulled my first novel, wasn't satisfied with the book), writing something like science fiction, which doesn't have a ravenous market, that means you calculate with 100% loss and are happy if you sell 10 units.
Indies often rely on things like Facebook/Google ads, newsletter and heavy social media marketing, all of which I hate with a passion. But it's "part of the business", which makes it a very unpleasant endeavor for me, and I've so far not done any marketing at all, which basically guarantees I'll stay an obscure writer in the hobbyist league, one small fish in an endless ocean. And that's okay.
If you think of traditional publishing, you have "the big 4" in the USA, and some foreign houses elsewhere, and you need an agent. Agents take a cut of anything you might earn, and they're not optional. An agent helps with some very basic plot doctoring, and most publishing houses won't even look at your manuscript if you send it in directly. Even with an agent, even if they're well-connected, there's a high chance your book will end up on the slush pile and never be seen. Not because editors are malicious, but because they're overwhelmed. You wouldn't believe the amount of books people put out every day, with a large percentage being unacceptable.
Agents, and editors at publishing houses, look for something they think sells. They're notoriously bad at predicting trends, but they are the ones who decide what gets published and what not. Remember the vampire hype? Then the "magic academy" boom? Editors tried to create an "angel hype" with very lacklustre success.
If you're lucky and write a book that falls into a category editors are looking for right now, they will then assign development and copywriting editors who work with you and tell you how to get the book in shape. They'll get a cover made (over which you have zero control, even if your name is Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson) and pay you a 5k advance, with a small percentage of the sales if and after your book makes the advance back (and if it doesn't, your pen name is burned).
It takes me about 3 months to write a book, which is just the writing. The planning can take weeks or months, depending on the setting, the characters, the plot and how far you lean on the planner-pantser-spectrum. If you just count the writing hours, a 5k advance means below minimum wage, so you won't live off your books. Add to that the high barrier of entry and the other activities like marketing, in which you will have to participate especially as a new author, and you'll see a very skewed effort/reward ratio.
Traditional publishing used to be more competitive, and until a few years ago the Big4 were the Big5. There also used to be a mid-list, the kind of author who could work as a writer full time, barely profitable, and usually paid for with profits from star authors' sales, in the hopes that one of their books breaks through. G.R.R. Martin was such a mid-lister for decades. The trend though has been to abandon that concept completely and fully focus on the established star authors, and on cheap newcomers who hopefully sell their books themselves by somehow going viral on TikTok.
That's why I said I see it as an expensive hobby, and why I don't mind being pirated. I want to be in creative control of my work, get a cover I like, tell the story I have in mind, without deadline or the pressure of having to sell.
I want to be read, not to sell; readers, not customers. So if someone puts it up for free, cool. Not that I could do anything about it anyway.
That all makes a lot of sense. If I’m reading you right it sounds like you do make a profit, but you’re making much less than minimum wage? Or has it been not profitable at all and a loss in that sense? You at least mentioned that new authors go in expecting it to be a total loss, which makes it sound like it could be sensible to put the writing online (basically free self-publishing), at least if the point is just to have people read it, and you’ll make a loss from a more properly published thing anyway (although it sounds like your biggest costs are editing / audiobooks / covers which maybe you consider an important part of the work in the first place). That said I feel like the internet has changed quite a lot and people don’t really follow specific creators and their websites so much anymore.
Yeah, I'm an Indie, I do self publishing without advertising. I'm spending more than I make.
The problem with putting your stuff online is, the pages that specialize in that and have it all set up and ready to go are mostly fanfiction and romance, so you won't get a lot of reads there, either.
I guess I could just upload my books on GDrive and put download links on my website. Haven't thought about that deeply yet. But I do write books, not blog posts or diary entries, and I like to have them in a neat package with proper presentation, in a format ebook reader apps can display painlessly. Nobody wants to read 70-100k word novels on a website ;)
Agreed. I can say that personally I went back and bought a lot of music that I copied off of my friends' ipods as a kid. I'm sure it isn't the norm to go back and buy stuff, but it happens.
that's the shitty part! I don't like that one bit.
Then pirate and make sure the creator gets nothing.
not ideal, you know, I would prefer it if creators had pay links attached to their accounts and you could anonymously send them money. Pirate something, pay the creator some money if you can. I mean, if enough people do it, the corps would be forced to change the game.
How do you tip say 500 people who made a film?
The sentiment is great. I'd love this also, but for film it won't work.
They were already paid during production.
The thing that would change is that we won't have movies where 500 people worked on who do it to get a paycheck, but instead 5-20 people who are really passionate about it.
While undermining the system that is already failing artists.
So you pirate it and donate the normal price to the author directly, right?
When I was in university, I watched a movie online using alternative means that I had been kind of interested in, but never went to see. I then watched it again. Then I went out and bought a DVD.
A little after that, I watched a lets play of a game that basically gave the entire experience in a single watch. I liked the game enough that I bought it immediately and just let it sit on my steam library without an install, just so the creator would receive their dues.
A year or so ago, I got a game through a charity bundle and wound up playing hundreds of hours of it. Since the creators got no money from my purchase, I bought merch, and waited for DLC to come out for me to buy instantly, just so they'd get something from me.
Recently, a AAA studio let go a bunch of creators while their game was wrapping up, essentially punishing them for a job well done. The creators will get nothing if I buy the game they made, but the studio that screwed them over will get everything. Just like I always have, I will give as much as they deserve to receive.
I did the same with Chernobyl. Originally watched it with my friends password, but I liked it so much I bought the steel book 4k. If I hadn't had that shared password they wouldn't have gotten any money out of me
Sometimes, when it's particularly impactful. But you can save your shaming for somebody who cares about your opinion. The fact that you've given me more attention than anybody with the power to change things shows where your allegiance lies.
I don't know what you mean by "allegiance", you were talking about ethics and that authors don't get what they deserve. Your problem was not compensation itself but that some people that you don't think deserve it get a bigger cut than you're comfortable with.
It logically follows that in this frame of mind the ethical thing to do is to cut out the middle man and compensate the original author for their work directly.
I don't know what kind of box you put me into based on one sentence but not everyone is out to get you who doesn't 100% agree with you. This is why civil discussion is not possible online anymore.
The problem is that pirates are mostly full of shit. They just don't want to pay. It's that simple. Everything else is an attempt to rationalize.
Not completely true. Are there shot pirates yes, just like there are shit uploaders that think it’s fun to bundle a computer virus with downloadable content.
If it’s something new, like a new book or movie, I will pay for it. The movies/shows I pirate are old and mostly out of circulation, unless they are streaming on some service. I pay for those so their is monetary transactions.
For example, I just recently spent 2 days downloading CHiPs original tv series, even with my high speed broadband it was that slow because there aren’t that many people offering it. Took me 3 days to find it to dl.
Not all piracy is bad. New stuff, ok not cool. But older stuff that has had a good run, the loss of revenue to creator/publisher is so minimal that they won’t feel it.
I’m an ethical pirate, if I think it’s worth watching over and over again I’ll buy it, if it’s available. I won’t pirate software or books.
I have kindle for reading and there is nothing new worth downloading software wise, plus I use linux on my computer, so all my software is free anyway, and if I can’t donate financially I find other ways to help. I’m not a big gamer and when I do game it’s on console, so I do pay for that.
You want to criticize my protest and waste my time, but when was the last time you sent an email to an elected official?
I'm not some kind of activist set out to undermine your movement, I asked a question. This is an online forum where anyone can comment, if you feel like it's wasting your time then don't answer.
Last time? A few months ago when a chinese company wanted to build a chemical distribution center in my district.
Give me a reasonably priced, accessible way to enjoy the content and I will happily pay for it.
Streaming has become untenable and now it's neither affordable nor convenient to watch what I want to watch. And with how frequently shows and movies bounce around platforms, who knows if the show I want to watch this weekend will be still available on one if the many platforms I've been paying for.
I'm just done with it.
My philosphy is Buy what you can afford, pirate the rest
I don’t pirate music or games because there are reasonable platforms and pricing models which make pirating more hassle than it’s worth. Shows and movies, on the other hand, are an absolute shitshow to purchase legally.
Outrageous pricing.
Declining quality. Especially writing. See Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, and Foundation.
Content is often unavailable to purchase. See Disney vault.
Competing streaming services. I’d have to subscribe to six services to access the shows I like.
Content disappears from services with little notice.
Studios and platforms have been removing and modifying older content for political reasons.
It’s like they’re trying to make the experience as bad as possible. So fuck ‘em. Thank you Sonarr and Radarr.
I cannot confirm, nor deny.
But, I will say, once upon a time, before the days of netflix, if you wanted to watch things, you needed to spend a fuckload of money, to watch it on cable, with commercials every 10 minutes.... or, you drove to a blockbuster. So, you either did that, or you obtained the movie/tv/etc, via a torrent.
Then, netflix came along, gave you a ton of content, at a reasonable price. And- then, there wasn't really much of an advantage to obtaining media via other alternative means. So, netflix took over by storm, and piracy went way down.
Then, everyone wanted a piece of the action. So, then Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, HBO+, ESPN+, (And insert 50 other network-specific streaming services) jumped into the fray. Then, they all made exclusive streaming contracts. So, if you watch a handful of things, you would need a handful of streaming service subscriptions.
And- again, the alternative option of piracy, became the better option, as you can watch whatever the f- you want, WHENever you want, without having to pay for 50 different subscriptions every month, just to watch a TV series, which they decide to cancel after the 2nd season.
If the fucking scumbags didn't get greedy in the first place, we wouldn't be in this situation. But, no, everyone wanted an extremely generous piece of the pie, and now everything has went to shit again. Fuck those guys. Isn't like the actual actors/writers staring in movies gets any of the money anyways.
All culture belongs to everyone, therefore should be accessible to everyone.
The sale of goods only concerns those who can and want to afford it.
Sharing is not theft.
Pirates are cool.
If there was a service I could pay like $100-200/mo for and just have every movie and TV show I'd happily pay for it. It doesn't exist, but pirate sites do and they do have every movie and TV show, including tons completely unavailable on any streaming service
GabeN got it right, piracy is a service issue. I haven't pirated a PC game in probably 12 years because steam works great and has basically every PC game I could ask for.
You know how writers get paid fuck all for the movies they write? You know how animators are paid criminally low wages for the anime they produce? At the end of the day for most media it's the companies that get all the money, not the artists. Therefore, fuck them, I am pirating your content not contributing to your profit margins.
I only pirate TVs/Movies. Streaming is in such a shitty state that I don't want to figure out what service is on what, and I'm certainly not going to subscribe for just one thing to watch. I feel no remorse.
My justification: nobody has stopped me yet🤷
I can sense angry Germans staring at your comment
Waldorf Frommer is eagerly reading too.
Yeah, RIP German piracy community. Always a huge PITA to find German movies online. I wasn't aware one company is driving most of those lawsuits though, what a wild story. Can't fault them for finding a great business model though
What happens when a German vists a piracy site:
https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/09/wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.html
I spent a decade with streaming services, because for 10 years, it was the best, easiest way to watch what you wanted to watch. I paid a fair price, and studios got a fair cut.
When every studio decided they wanted a bigger cut by extracting more out of my pocket, they intensionally fragmented the market and made me pay an unfair price for an inferior product. They haven't innovated, done more, or produced better TV or movies, they just demand more for the same.
So, I pirate.
I had to write a research report in university about whether or not piracy hurt or helped the recording industry.
From the research, I found multiple studies that compared brain activity of shoplifters compared to those of pirates. The area of the brain that lit up when stealing physical objects did NOT light up for those who pirated.
Digital piracy is not theft. No one is hurt except for unrealized revenue. But if someone pirates, was that even potential revenue to begin with?
It was also found that piracy allowed for greater reach of content which statistically resulted in more people attending live concerts (think of piracy as free advertisement). Concert attendance led to increase in ticket and merchandise sales.
So overall? Piracy is good. It is only bad if you ignore multiple factors and only focus on short term bottom lines. A net positive.
I agree with your friend.
If there's a media that I want to continue to exist and similar works to be made, I will buy it. Depending on how much I enjoy it I will wait for a sale or pay full price.
Don't pay your employees a livable wage, or use creative accounting to minimise profit and therefore tax payable. don't expect money from me.
I dont have any deep philosophy. I do it because its free.
Yes
No
Mood
Copyright is fucking wierd and an anomaly. It has only existed very recently in all history. Part of the reason we have the works of Shakespeare is due to the fact that there was no copyright then, so taking a part of someone else's work and rehashing into something new was common and innovative. Disney do this with old folk stories, but then they get to "copyright" it? It's abhorrent. It stifles further creativity. Take that horrible weirdo TERF who wrote some wizarding shit. She would have done very nicely without copyright protection. It's not needed. So-called "piracy" is just normal behaviour. Nothing wrong with it.
My time is more valuable than money, but I still pirate. To me it's not about money but principles.
If I pay for something and still can't "own" it, I pirate.
If a generous portion of the money I pay isn't going to the rightful individuals but to our corporate overlords, I pirate.
If my internet freedom is threatened, I pirate.
If someone pirates due to lack of money and one day they have enough, I suggest keep pirating and donate to FOSS and pay to individual creators.
There's nothing morally wrong with stealing from a profit driven corporation as they would (and do) do the same to you at every chance given. At that point it's just healthy competition.
I don't justify it. I stopped caring. That's as evil as it can get, I suppose.
I pirate all media I consume and seed terabytes of pirated media every month, proudly. Fuck capitalism, that's my justification.
The last games I purchased are Dave the Diver and BG3. Those games have something in common:
All other titles I simply pirate. Here are my reasons:
Regarding this:
Once upon a time, I pirated Subnautica. Played for 10 minutes and realized "fuck it" and I bought both games. Realised that this is going to be a loooong game for me. No regrets supporting the company - those became one of my favorite games of all time.
For me, paying 20-60 eur (depending on a game) is fine and using Steam is more convenient, but in most cases - piracy is usually more convenient to me. :)
yes
I pirate shows/movies, and books by big name rich authors, or dead authors.
I’m not going to lie to myself to justify it. I know what it is. I’ve known what it is since my dial up days.
Sometimes I pirate media as a trial run. If a get a few chapters into a book or an hour or so into a game and decide I hate it then great, I didn't waste my money. The flip side of this is I have to be honest with myself and shell out when I feel I've gotten enough out of the media. The nice thing is that I get to draw that line for myself rather than some third party arbitrarily telling me how long my trial should last.
I want the stuff so I get the stuff.
Yes. If I could purchase what I get from piracy (media files with no DRM that I can use as I see fit) for a reasonable price I would do so. Unfortunately this is not a thing and even the compromise of being able to stream doesn't work because all the media companies have decided they need their own services and even then not everything is available. Piracy is just way more convenient.
Back when Netflix was actually decent I actually did stop pirating tv and movies for the most part because there was enough content on there to keep me entertained. Eventually I had to unsubscribe though because it got to the point there was nothing on there I wanted to watch.
Just FYI, if you also pirate games, try buying them on GOG which does exactly what you want - DRM free games you can store wherever you want. If a significant number of people said "either GOG or pirating", more big companies would put their games on the store.
I do buy games on gog and I buy books on humble bundle.
Easiest way to obtain media is to pirate, so I pirate it. But also because I hate copyright and patent laws.
I can afford to buy or subscribe to services but at this point streaming is just more annoying than pirating. With pirating I can use my favorite player (mpv), maximize video quality (high quality blu-ray rips), watch offline, no bugs or buffering, instant seeking et.c. As for games I might pirate a game before buying it but usually I just buy it since it's convenient (unless it has intrusive DRM).
So my philosophy is: If I couldn't pirate this, would I ignore it or buy it? If it's the latter I buy it, if it's the former I pirate it. Basically if the creator (or distributor or whatever) isn't gonna benefit either way might as well enjoy it. I also exclusively pirate anime because the way streaming currently works is a mess.
A similar question I ask myself: do I care if this company continues to exist and produce similar content? The answer is usually the same.
🙄 the stories you tell yourself to justify your stealing LMAO.
I evaluate if there is value and if I deem no I steal it anyway and then play/listen/read for 40 hours 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Bad troll
I pirate when it's literally less effort than buying. This mostly applies to E-books. Also I pirate a lot of shows and movies because fuck subscribing to 10 different streaming services.
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.
I don't pirate, but generally, I don't pay for digital goods either. I'm mostly not a fan of how digital goods are tied to corporate platforms, which could disappear or make changes I don't enjoy. For some digital goods, you can fully download them and back them up to a hard-drive, but I just don't care enough to do that, when I can use FOSS software and Creative Commons songs, e-books etc..
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.
I buy stuff to support authors/artists that I like, and my dollar goes further if I keep as much money as possible out of corporate hands. Oh and if any scum bag puts ads in something I already paid them for I am pirating and seeding the torrents.
Yes. Yes, because I fucking can. And if I love a movie so much I want to own it, I buy the bluray, no I don’t that’s a lie
The antifeature of DRM anyone? Wanting open source that you can keep running, up to date and secure, as long as you want?
I just want a service that's better than Netflix/Amazon/Disney/Spotify can offer. I want all my media in one place. I want access to it even if the internet is down. Segmentation of media across all the platforms is bullshit and it drives me wild. I'm getting less than what I paid for when Netflix was the only game in town. It's worse and less than what it used to, so why bother paying them.
I pirate everything I consume.
I do believe artists should be paid for what they create, so I still purchase music even if I've already pirated it. The artists get more money from me than they would have if I just streamed on Spotify. I think it's a win-win for me and the artists.
I get almost all literature for my papers from libgen and scihub. I even have access to a lot or journals through my uni's VPN, but it's just much simpler and quicker to use the open seas.
My justification is that a) scientific journal publishers are evil and a scourge on humankind, and b) on average, I only need like 1% of the info in such literature, so I would never buy it anyway, which means that me pirating it doesn't affect sales in any way.
Do I pirate? Yes.
My philosophy? I don't wanna pay for it.
Honestly, with the exception of abandonware that can't legally be bought anywhere, piracy can't be legitimately excused. If you do it, you do it because you want something that you should pay for, but don't wanna. Which is a choice you can make, I won't hate you for it, but own that instead of pretending that you have a logical moral argument to getting it.
My piracy preference revolves around that convinience tops all. Spotify has all the music I listen to, so I subscribe to it. Netflix doesn't have the shows I want to watch, so I make a Jellyfin server that auto downloads all the stuff I'm planning to watch. Steam has most of the games I would want without much restrictions, so I buy games there. I want no interruptions from the content I want to use, and stuff like ads, content unavailability, geoblocks are a big no for me.
If I didn't pirate everything, I wouldn't buy it anyway because I don't have money.
I do not purchase any digital content.
If I like some movies enough, I will purchase them on DVD. I like to have something physical.
I'd do likewise with games, if I played any. If it's just download, I am not purchasing it. If it comes on disc/cartridge, sure.
Exception to this is FOSS. FOSS is almost always free in cost, but if possible, I'll donate on it. It is the only digital content I am willing to pay for. That is because it has the chance to benefit other projects. And if I'll ever learn programming, potentially even some of my own.
Every company that owns media or copy protected information has one goal. To bleed consumers dry of as much money as possible. They lobby governments against our interests, track our data, and destroy the integrity of the product that they are selling to accomplish this.
For everything that I am interested in, I seek the best experience. I want the media I consume to be available, convenient, and unaltered. If I can pay a reasonable fee for that then I will. If not then I will seek other means. I am tired of corporations fighting to change culture and expectations to be "more profitable" rather than delivering a product that consumers actually want. I will continue to vote with my dollars (or lack there of) until this practice changes (which will likely be never).
For me, it's simple. I generally stick to A/V media for any of the Linux ISOs I download.
It simply comes down to this: is there a simple, and affordable way for me to watch what I want? If so, do it.
For music, I just have a subscription to my music service of choice. For me that's YouTube music (formerly Google Play music); but it could just as easily be apple music or Spotify or tidal.... they all have 99% of all music, so the provider I go with will service all my needs for less than $20/mo. With ytm, I can also share the service with family, without really any additional cost. Within limits, of course.
For TV/movies, everything is splintered between more than a handful of services, each charging ~$15/mo or more. So to get access to everything, I would need to pay more than $100/mo.
Yo ho ho me maties. That's not simple, nor cheap. Yarrrr.
Give me a single website to go to, that gives me a single reasonable fee that I can then access everything on paramount+, HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+.... (You get the idea)... and I'll hang up my hat for good. Since that's never going to happen, I'll just be over here, sharpening my hook.
Stealing means taking something wrongfully from someone else. Piracy doesn't take anything.
Plus, money can go to better causes than exploitative movie studios.
I used to pirate everything when I had no money. Now that I have money I buy games - including everything I ever pirated - and I pay for a few other subscription services that are worth or nearly worth their price. I pirate anything else.
I live in a country where the government doesn't really care about piracy so I pirated a lot of things in my life.
Before the whole "streaming wars" I actually stopped pirating shoes and movies because Netflix was much more convenient. But nowadays every service has 1 or 2 things that I want to watch or sometimes it just gets removed from the platform so pirating became more convenient somehow.
Books on the other hand are kinda different. I prefer physical books but I live in a non English speaking country so when a new book comes out and I want to read it I have two choices either hope that some publisher translates it even then the translation sucks most of the time or just pirate it.
I don't pirate indie games. Other games depends on the company.
I'm very casual for a pirate.
If I can't afford it or I believe it's ridiculously overpriced (cough, adobe cough cough), or if I am against some stupid client that phones home and sucks resources (again cough cough adob..) then I'll pirate it.
If I can't purchase it because it's nowhere available for sale, say, some 90s series in such and such language- pirate.
Finally, if I'm curious about something but not feeling comitted, I'll pirate first then see if I buy.
I don't justify any of this. I just do.
I directly support artists that I like. I pirate absolutely anything and everything without a care. I do not respect the concept of intellectual property. It is economic perversion to make scarce an infinite resource. May the copyright régime perish.
I only "pirate" stuff that isn't being sold by a rights-holder at the current time.
There's a stunning amount of stuff out there (like really old games that have now-defunct devs and publishers, for example) that isn't being offered first-hand for sale any longer.
Morally, I think it's our duty to use and preserve such things, so that they aren't lost to time. Some may say that it's technically piracy, but... I really don't see it that way.
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
Because streaming services are either slow at releasing new episode or the service isn't available at my region. (Restrictions they put themselves, not my countries government)
They don't want my money :(
I justify it for these massive companies that have been making record profits for years, while the common person is struggling with energy crises, fuel price increases, lack of housing. And these Hollywood exces are chilling in their mansions and yachts.
I don't pirate games though, as I like them in my library, and they're not tied to a subscription or a shitty company like Amazon.
It's super interesting to me that piracy is generally considered immoral, but going to the library is considered pious. Obviously there's some differences with these things... But in general I find it incredibly frustrating and depressing that we have developed the tools to copy and share information pretty much instantaneously across the globe and that we have decided that this is a bad thing instead of a miracle. Obviously I still want people to be able to make things and make a living, but I wish we could find a better way to do this while providing access to more people. We can have kick-ass libraries with modern technology, but it's stunted for legal and capitalistic reasons... I'm not saying I have all of the answers, but I wish more people could at least recognize that as a shame.
If I don't have access to a paid version of it, I'll pirate it. It's not like you're losing a potential sale if I literally can't give you my money.
If I disagree with the ethics/philosophy of a company (i.e. Disney) I'll pirate it. They may make good movies but I'll not support them financially.
If it's too damn difficult to find an accessible version of it, I'll pirate it. I'm fine with paying for shit, but not spending an hour of my free time just trying to give you my money.
I pay for things that are more convenient than piracy. Namely games and music.
EBooks and audiobooks are too expensive, the multitude of video services too inconvenient.
My actions sometimes result in massive corporations not maximizing their potential profit. I'm fine with it, capitalism gets all my money anyway.
Yeah, sometimes.
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).
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 can't find any logically consistent way too label piracy as immoral. It doesn't remove the original and it's just creating virtually free copies. It's the definition of a victimless crime.
The fact that you're hypothetically removing profit from the creator only becomes a moral issue if that loss of profit is A) guaranteed, that is, the recipient of the free copy would definitely have paid for it otherwise, and B) is significant enough to impact their life negatively. And the latter happening is much more an indictment of the system that demands people justify their existence through the extraction of profit than it is of the consumers who are just copying a few bytes.
The idea of paying more than a few cents for any digital media is frankly absurd. It's highway robbery that we're paying the same amount to rent a copy of a movie as to buy a pound of meat or a gallon of gas. It's 99% just blatant price gouging.
I never pirated much, then I pretty much stopped when online services became usable and cost effective.
Now I really feel the urge to go back to pirating, services have become extremely fragmented and difficult to use. There are less shows/movies available than ever. And the cost is sky rocketing.
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
marketpublic.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.
I pirate cause I want free stuff. No need for me to try to justify it.
Most of the time, I view piracy as a last resort. I'll try to legally obtain it, but there are circumstances when I do sail the seas:
Textbooks. This is a all around greedy industry preying on poor college students like me that barely pays the actual authors. They don't deserve my money, and I don't have much of it anyways.
Video games/books I already own. I already paid for it, so it's justifies to me.
Old video games that don't have a real platform that I emulate. I understand that I shouldn't pirate a 2021 video game, but a 2001 video game that I can't legally buy on PC/phone is a different matter.
Aforementioned skimming through books. I might buy it after doing that.
Music. Why? Half the stuff I listen to isn't even on Spotify or other streaming platforms. Additionally, I can manage my own library, listen offline without having to follow the whims of a streaming app, and even change the pitch and speed of the music!
I think copyrights are a heresy, a cancer for humanity. So I don't care about pirating.
But I don't pirate much these days because it became more difficult with torrent and I can easily pay for video games and support the studios I like.
I pirate music to archive it. I use youtube revanced to listen to music but the songs just disappear from my playlists with no way to know what dissapeared, spotify is nice but I still like to keep my music locally.
I pirate movies to also keep them, I don't have a DVD player so paying just for digital copies where ownership is questionable seems not worth it. Better to pirate and have it forever then to buy it and lose is it due to changes in policy or regional blocking. Streaming services are just not worth it, small roster of movies so you have to use different services for each movie. So simply not even worth the hassle
I pirate most book, finding books I want in English is not possible and the best alternative is amazon which I'd rather not feed money.
For games I have basic rules:
Indie games are mostly offlimits, I'd rather support the studio (I might pirate indie games to see if I like them, since most don't have demos but I would buy them if I liked them)
Pirating bigger games I look at the developer and publisher. I pirate games made or published by companies I don't like, for examle: EA (generally disliked for squeezing every ounce of profit out of games, too many micro-transactions) or blizzard/activion(Sexual harassment allegations, corporate greed). No need to support such companies just take what they make while they're here.
Publishers can also ruin games, look at how deep silver betrayed metro fans and signed and exclusive contract with epic last minute.
As lord Gaben did say, piracy is just an issue of convenience but I would like to also add the factor of security of keeping them.
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 pay for free stuff (FOSS services etc), and pirate paid stuff. Feel right somehow, can't explain why exactly.
Streaming sucks at the moment so I pirate TV and movies. I've recently pirated a few books but that's mainly because it hadn't even occurred to me that I could until recently. I'm not a big reader.
I don't really care about the ethics of it. I used to pirate music in my teens but now we have things like iTunes and Spotify and I don't feel any reason to now. If TV and movies get back to that, I'll stop pirating that too.
For me it's just convenience and saving a bit of money not having 18 subscriptions.
I download ebooks that I already own the physical copy of. I pay for 4 (yes 4) streaming services. if a movie i want isnt on any of them, high seas. a few years ago things were better and i almost never had that situation come up, now it seems its every other movie either isnt on anything or on some niche service
my philosophy is that it's 1s and 0s and it's harming absolutely nothing.
companies push malignant restrictions all the time, geolocking being one of the grossest, drm, the no-screenshot thing, price increases, random rights bullshit, etc. pirating is simply better. better than buying the disc, even! [special features aside], you just get the file, no fuss, no case to put somewhere, no annoying menus, etc. unlike vinyl, having the disc doesn't really enhance the experience as much, i find.
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 don't want to spend money.
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.
Gabe newell once said “piracy is not a problem of price its a problem of service" after people kept pirating valve game titles. So he made sales more frequent and games cheaper. Piracy is usually frowned upon but it also teaches businesses what the customers don't like. AE like with adobe and there photo shop suite aswell as the newer unity game engine dispute. As a consumer I have no problem paying for a service unless it is inherently difficult to cancel as discussed by Louis rossman in mulitible videos aswell as company's nickle and diming the consumer.
In this post they asked what one considers ethical piracy, and this is how I commented:
I often don't consume what I don't deem a reasonable price for a reasonable offering. I occasionally (or maybe rarely?) buy music on Bandcamp because I can download and own it in high quality. For movies and series, there is no such thing, which is a requirement for me to pay. So I don't buy or rent individual movies and series at all. (Bundled streaming can be a reasonable offering. It's not about individual products then.) Overall I buy videogames for reasonable prices, to a higher degree than I play (or even can play) them. When it's a good or great price for something that interests me, looks good, and I want to support, I buy it. Software has many free and open source software available - so I don't see a need to anything in that regard.
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.
I pay for all the cable channels, netflix, hulu, d+. I had HBO Max before they started doing whatever it is they're doing. At this monthly cost, I should have access to everything that existed 6 months ago and older. The fact that they can't sort out all greed and multi-million dollar media exec paychecks is none of my concern. If I were to keep copies of everything that I like, I find it REALLY hard to feel bad about that.
I used to Pirate everything when I didn't have any money, once I started making some money I pirated the things that I didn't want to afford quite yet, these days I only pirate on occasion for testing things out before I buy them
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”
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.
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.
If I have legally purchased content or an application, and that content or application is no longer available for some reason, then I feel justified pirating.
A game that requires an online connection but the company took down the servers and won't release the code for example.
There is no legitimate way for me to use the thing I already bought.
Other than that, I'm just too lazy to do it any more.
When I was young and poor, there was various software I did pirate, but now days there is nothing I need that the company won't pay for.
I pirate content that is not in print within my region. Fan subs of Japanese TV shows, emulated games for discontinued consoles, things like that.
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.
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.
Not much thought goes into it. I've never bought a copy of windows in twenty years of using it because they don't need the money. I buy small pieces of specialist software from small and independent developers. I've got a streaming video service but if it doesn't have the thing I want to watch I find it online.
Convenience and lack of ads
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.
If unemployed: Pirate EVERYTHING.
If employed: Pirate EVERYTHING (excluding: indie games)
No, I don't, because I can afford stuff and pirating in this situation would be just pure stealing which I believe is morally wrong. Yes, being a billionaire is usually morally wrong too but I don't think it just cancels out.
Justifying piracy by saying capitalism is bad sounds like a hypocrisy to me. You want to use something that exists thanks to capitalism without participating in it. You want to eat your cake and have it too.
Now, the case is different for people that can't afford stuff, especially when they genuinely need it (but I don't draw the line at entertainment, after all people NEED entertainment too). In that case, please pirate away. Everyone deserves a decent life. In general, I largely agree with OP's friend.
I also can afford stuff but sometimes stuff doesn't allow itself to be bought. Tried buying some music in mp3 format from Amazon, they wouldn't sell me digital music because I didn't live in one of the handful of countries they sell to. So I just ordered the audio CD and ripped it. Now I have the physical disk as well which, I'm not going to lie, I like, but convenience went out the window. This was a new release.
On a different occasion (older release), I couldn't find the audio CD version but found a site that sold to me (not Amazon, but what do you know, it is possible to sell digital goods all over the world. Whoddathunkit?).
And then I have some music I still cannot find neither digital nor disk except for some very rare vinyls which pop up once in a while. And I don't have a set-up to rip vinyls, so what does one do about that? Piracy is also a service problem.
Yeah, I didn't mention this but if it's just impossible to buy something then I don't see anything wrong about piracy. No one looses anything.
These things don't exist because of capitalism. They exist in capitalism. They were created by people with talent, skill and artistic vision, and the passion to pull it off. They would be creating in any system. All capitalism did was add people above the creators to own their work and siphon the majority of profit.
That might be true in many cases but do you actually believe that things requiring immense investments and years of work like AAA games and high budget blockbuster movies would be created in any system?
Absolutely.
Give me 5 years without worrying about the money, and I'll build a game bigger and fancier than any AAA title (assuming someone else will do the art and story)
I'd build worlds just because I like to feel godlike - I'd write the rules to generate world after world just because that's what I am, and without worrying about finances I'd hand it off to others to do what they love with it. Other people love writing engines or handcrafting experiences - I love building the tools
I think you're looking at it the wrong way -- AAA stuff isn't good because of a profit motive, it's this bad because everyone is trying to minimize the work put in and maximize the profits. If everyone working on games collaborated on a few engines and shared work freely between each other, we'd have way better games
Of course they could. Why not? You're still thinking in terms of capitalism, which is the problem. Only in a capitalist system do these things require large amounts of investment.
Films are created by teams of people. Under capitalism, they need to be paid, and handsomely, because they need money to survive. What about a system that already provides basic needs? One that directly invests in its community? One that doesn't even need money, because it becomes redundant once goods are provided freely?
In such a system, people work on what they want, when they want, and provide for society because it's their true desire. Such a system not only would still create art, it would create vastly more art, because literally anyone could make it.
I find it kinda hard to believe that people would be able to achieve the level of organization and would be willing to put in the effort required just by doing what they want when they want, without any outside incentive. I'm not talking about a painting or a book, that's why I specifically mentioned things requiring large investments. And by investment I didn't mean just money but time and effort in general.
Why?
I just don't think the majority of people are motivated enough. I have met many people who have no hobbies and no ambitions and just don't want to do anything productive. They would like to spend their entire lives playing video games or partying or something similar.
And this is just about the lack of motivation, but what about malicious actors? People who would sabotage other's efforts or try to profit in an unfair way? How would you ensure this won't happen?
What about shitty and unpleasant but necessary jobs no one wants to do?
The idea that once you remove the money everyone will suddenly feel the desire to serve the society is bonkers. Don't get me wrong, I don't love capitalism. I want to believe the world like that is possible, I really do, but I just can't see it working. I live in a society where I have to use a 3 kg bike lock in order not to lose my bike and even then I have to detach the $10 light and take it with me because otherwise it won't be there when I come back. I have zero trust and belief that such society can magically self organize and work together towards a common happiness.
Call this cope if you want, but I think that's largely down to their material conditions. For most people, options really aren't that great for truly succeeding, or even living a decent life. Not that this makes their decision logical, but it does make it understandable. A society that sees to their basic needs and has completely open career opportunities presents so much more choice. Imagine the difference in mentality it would engender if you never grew up needing to worry about your next meal. If you never saw any indication that your parents were struggling, or anyone else's. If everyone seemed to be doing what they wanted in their lives. You would grow up with a mentality that you could learn anything you wanted, and the knowledge that you could actually do it, and society would support you in your ambition. And, even if you had no genuine long-term ambition or hobbies - people just get bored. Imagine if, when you got bored, you had the option to help run a coffee shop, or to help someone harvest their farm, without needing to take it on as a full-time job, but just for something to do that afternoon?
Compare that to how people are socialised today - the vast majority of people will grow up in a family that is divided in some way or other, and in the majority of cases, financial reasons can be easily discerned. One of the partners perhaps isn't contributing to the finances, or is spending frivolously. One perhaps won't get a job even though a single income is not covering expenses. Or both are working and even that isn't enough, leading to extremes of stress. Or maybe one has a much better paying job than the other, leading to resentment due to dependence. Growing up with such a family would show a child that working is a world of stress, and that money controls everything. These formative years can entirely shape a person's worldview for life. And entering the competitive world of schooling, then later entering the working world itself, will only confirm those feelings, because everything in our lives is constant competition, constant grind and pressure to always be trying to get the most value out of everything. That can just wear a person down to the point that doing anything seems like too much effort and too much time, when so little time is available.
No one can ever ensure people won't act maliciously. Even in the perhaps utopian world I described, people can still simply be rotten, or be made rotten in some way due to other rotten people. What we can do is, between us, try to create the type of world thus described. The truly malevolent may not be stamped out, but they can be vastly reduced (in the cases where they were made to be so because of society failing them), and the people who were driven to desperation due to need (the vast majority of what we could call 'crime') would no longer exist as a category.
That is a loaded question. There truly is no job that "no one wants to do". For one thing, volunteer work, open source projects, and internet moderation proves that people will work for free. And people who, even under capitalism, perform demanding, demeaning, disgusting and thankless jobs who nonetheless sincerely love their jobs (though usually not the conditions or the pay), proves that people can find joy in any kind of work.
Why do you say that? People worked and had functioning societies loooong before money was invented. Before property was invented. There's evidence for thriving, culturally advanced, diverse, egalitarian societies throughout prehistory, with no state or hierarchy. The Indus Valley civilisation is one example. Attempts to create such egalitarian societies in the modern era have failed not because it isn't possible, but because outside forces - most often the US, particularly the CIA - have either fully invaded or sabotaged the project covertly. Revolutionary Catalonia would have thrived if it weren't for Franco's Fascist Spain. The Communards managed to establish working class rule in Paris until they were crushed by the French Army. Chile elected a socialist, Allende, and the CIA wasted absolutely no time invading to coup his ass and install a dictator. Check other South American countries for similar stories.
It doesn't fail because it doesn't work. It is sabotaged. Every single time.
I want you to consider this this worldview only exists because of the society we exist in.
Consider this: how much of a concern would that be if bikes were free?
Please afford me the common respect of not assuming I believe in magic, or, that I metaphorically believe this would happen as if by magic, easily, instantly, with zero effort involved. I have no illusions that this could happen without a complete revolution of society, with the working class revolting completely of their own accord, in unison and common effort, toward the goal of rebuilding society with themselves in control, and dethroning the elite, demolishing their structures and ravaging all they have built.
It will not be easy. It will not be pretty. There will be terror. There will perhaps be beheadings of billionaires in town squares. There may be invasions of mansions to burn them down and kidnap their occupants.
And there also may not be. Revolutions have happened that could be descibed in such a way. They also have happened more peacefully - with violence, of course, but not terror. Military tactics and organised citizenry simply demanding their rights en masse, with only the threat of their numbers being necessary. But more often, there is a mixture of such things.
So no, it will not happen magically. Even as metaphor, that is not what I imagine. Unless you consider the human spirit wishing for its true freedom to be a form of magic, and the co-operation of people truly wishing each other the best to be magic also, then in case, maybe so. But we have evidence enough that these things exist. And magic is only deserved as a description of things fantastical with no precedent or reasonable basis.
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.
Copying is not theft. Stealing a thing leaves one less left. Copying it makes one thing more; that’s what copying’s for. Copying is not theft. If I copy yours you have it too. One for me and one for you. That’s what copies can do. If I steal your bicycle you have to take the bus, but if I just copy it there’s one for each of us! Making more of a thing, that is what we call “copying”. Sharing ideas with everyone. That’s why copying is FUN!
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.
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.
Media in English language are either inaccessible or overpriced while translations vary in quality. I'm also a little fan of how individuals in seed-peer networks keep content alive just for the sake of it. I don't see how piracy hurts artists as much as it's said to.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
It's capitalism, the free market at work.
I usually don't pirate, if something is overpriced then I'll wait until it's on sale. I have a set budget every month that I pay for entertainment, if something like a new video game is more expensive I'll just wait a month.
I'm especially against pirating products of asshole companies like Adobe. That's because even if you don't pay for them you're still popularizing their products, helping it stay an industry standard. I'm not in a profession where they're a necessity so I use their competitors like Affinity, which is good enough for my purposes, and I'm ok with supporting them.
I sometimes watch movies or series on non-legal streaming sites if they're not available elsewhere, but that's about it.
why are adobe assholes btw? I mean, I seriously don't know. Also, when a company becomes big enough, it's almost like you are hurting yourself by not pirating their products.
Good point on not pirating and promoting the alternatives. Didn't occur to me that a user pirating is one less user for competing products or free software
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.
Yes, I pirate. But I don't justify it. 🤷♂️
Something fun I listened to today about tpb and free access to information/cultural peices of art. Kinda.. https://youtu.be/eFQFW5JgUjE?si=50BXG19ey8pVEYfv
If you're gonna do it, do it, but don't pretend like you're morally right in doing it. For the vast majority of us, we're pirating something we don't need but something we want. Is it hard to acquire? Does it come tied to annoying subscriptions? Does it come from a company you don't like? Is it too expensive? None of these are valid reasons to pirate something because you could just as well enjoy other media that are available to you. Or if you are out of accessible media to you, you could just not enjoy media. Be bored. You're not entitled to access to the things you're pirating.
Don't get me wrong, I understand you, and I empathize. I pirate too, when something I want falls under the conditions I listed above, but I'm under no illusion that it's ethical in some way. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism? Well there's no ethical piracy either. People put work into something and if you use it, you should pay what they ask for it.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, because no one wants to be the bad guy. Pirate if you want to pirate, your reasons are yours, but be honest about it. You pirated something because you wanted it, and you didn't want to not get it, and you didn't want to pay the entry price either. It is what it is.
I won't shed a tear for the entertainment industry, if they make it harder to watch content than it is to pirate there just isn't any point paying, I don't really consume enough content to justify having even one streaming service though. I pay for spotify because its convenient and I pay to go the movies because it offers an unique experience.
Edit: Academic books is something that I pirate even if it's time consuming and inconvenient, because fuck them for swapping two chapters every 2 years to sell more books.
Like I said, you can have your reasons, but that doesn't justify it. Just because the entertainment industry has bad people doesn't mean it's right to pirate. Just do it, but be honest that you're doing something bad, and be fine with doing something bad
My thoughts exactly, thanks for writing this comment. The discourse in here is a bit one-sided
Like I said, it's an unpopular opinion. There's a massive amount of copium around piracy. If you read the other reply to my comment you'll also see that people are totally ok with adversely affecting people they don't like:
And then they justify it with accessibility. But if this media is not accessible to you, then the morally right thing to do is not to access it.
And then they justify the high price, or the poor value proposition. Then don't buy it if you can't or don't want to, but don't pretend pirating it is good
Then sometimes people give examples of when they don't pirate. Because the truth is that they know it's not right, and they want you to see that they're not all bad, right?
As an aside to this, education is something else in my mind. Information, science, education, etc. should be tax funded and freely available to everyone. Access to a specific piece of media isn't crucial to the average Joe, but a specific piece of information can be crucial to literally everyone.
Just big companies and because they will screw people over for a profit.
I pay for music because it is easy. I don't pay for video because there is no avenue like spotify for video
I used to pirate quite a bit, but I’ve since pulled back and I’ll even buy stuff that I had formerly pirated, because I appreciated it so well and wanted to get a “clean” copy. Alot of the pirated stuff just sort of sits there most of the time, I’m kind of more a data hoarder than an active pirate. I “justify” my pirating by considering myself more of an archivist, as a big chunk of the stuff I pirate is old out-of-print RPGs that would have long ago disappeared completely were it not for piracy.
It's the ease of use for me. Arrs + usenet + plex is an unbeatable combo.
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 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
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.
Your friend has a similar belief to me it appears. Companies don't care about piracy as long as it doesn't stop a quarterly profit. Of course don't pirate a book or video game from a small author or devs. If the game or book is hard to come by there isn't much to do any way.
I however rarely do pirate things for various reasons. Namely I don't have time for reading or playing a new video game. Maybe once in a while. If you're friend is doing it every day I would be concerned but probably not care
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.
Across everyone in the house, we have Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney/ESPN. Sailing the high seas means all the shows and movies available from those servicea can be accessed via one media server interface.
Every once in a while I log into Amazon Video to see if their interface is as hot trash as I remember. It always is.
Everything not physical that can be pirated should be pirated.
You have better thing to do with your money.
Books exist to be lent out.
Games too at the time. Now you can't because of bullshit, so joke on them I won't pay.
Books & Music money is not going to the artists.
Movie world is full of shit and overpaid anyway.
I also don't wan't a single of my cents going to USA or US company.
If I like something so much I feel I should pay, which is rare, I find a more direct way without leeches.
Yes, I pirate, and I pirate alot. Games, books, shows, software, I do it all. But I also buy stuff, mainly games, occasionally books. I'm am not in a position where I have the sort of money to buy everything I want.
My piracy philosophy is mainly to almost always pirate it first. If I like the game enough, I'll buy the game when I have the money. I have done this alot, A Hat in Time, Hollow Knight, and recently Baldurs Gate 3.
With books it's alot more difficult, as they tend to be alot more expensive than games, especially for the series I read. (Manga and Light Novels). As there will fairly often be around 30$ per volume where I live, and close to 12 volumes total. And that's if you can even buy them in the country, or if they have even been translated officially, which if they haven't, then piracy is your only choice to read it.
Regarding shows, I basically only watch Anime, and the only way to really stream Anime is crunchyroll, which region locks alot of the shows, gives hardly any money back to the actual creators of the shows, then uses the money they get to make awful shows. Pirating anime is realistically the only way to enjoy it hassle free.
For software, everything is license based now, I'm willing to do one off purchases at a reasonable price (something like steam wallpaper engine), but I hate recurring fees. I pirate software like photoshop.
Ultimately piracy isn't really as bad as people tend to think it is, it's largely just people enjoying the stuff that they would never have been able to pay to enjoy anyway. It's especially good for people with less disposable income in helping them find where they can spend the money on things they enjoy, such as with me with the games I mentioned earlier.
I will pirate it if it's old (tv series from the 80's, for example) or if I can't get it legally. I live in a country that falls through distribution loopholes moderately often. Like right now, I can't watch the latest season of Lower Decks on prime even though I could the previous ones. Some kind of licensing thing. If it's not resolved soon, I'll be taking to the high seas for it.
When there's no legitimate way for me to rent something. I recently downloaded Joe vs the Volcano and Counterpart because there's no streaming service that has them on offer.
I have pirated some opera video recordings. It's the only way I'd see some of them. I don't know how to pirate TV or music, and I'd never pirate music anyway because I care a lot about music.
arg?
Well aren't you just helpful as can be.
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 metric shitloads of movies and series. I don't pirate music or games (much).
I watch maybe 5-10% of what I download. That's probably true for the games I buy as well.
The reason is part convenience. I probably listen to royalty free 95% music of the time, but for the other occasions Spotify has anything and everything I want to listen to. I can't beat that library.
I game on Linux, the Switch and old retro computers. The old retro computers have all pirated games on them, but for Linux and Switch I buy my stuff on the Nintendo shop and Steam. They have everything and it just works.
The video streaming services of today have also taught me that they will pull licenses. When Netflix had a big library I stuck mostly to that, but today it feels like all the good content has been pulled and they mostly just have Netflix originals. So Hollywood has taught me that If I want to watch something, I shouldn't rely on it being available on my streaming service of choice in the future. I'm not going to subscribe to a dozen streaming services just for the odd chance that I want to watch something particular. I'm going to have my own plex server with everything I might want to watch.
The one show that would make me consider getting a second streaming subscription just to support it is Futurama. But of course, Hulu is not available in my region.. so, yarr.
I just don't earn enough money to justify paying for movies, games and books, i can use those money to pay my bills and what little left after paying my bills, i save it for future
I am disabled and earn pennies every month. I'll glady support something I like (I buy a shitton of CDs), but I won't lose any sleep from pirating a movie I wasn't gonna buy or see in the theatres anyway.
If its not multiplayer, why care.
I have no issue pirating:
I used to pirate anything. Music, movies, softwares, games...
Since I have a developer job and a stable income, I don't really pirate much stuff anymore, only movies and series, but then the whole piracy thing is not even illegal here where I live.
Maybe softwares, too, if I can't find any free and/or open source alternative of it.
For games and music, I like to pay, if I can. If it's expensive, I wait to some sale.
And also, with pirated stuff, you always end up something doesn't work or missing or you just have to make compromises. Fuck that, I'm too old for that.
One aspect of pirating is appealing to me tho - preservation. Anything you can't go and just buy because of dead services or just time going by needs to be preserved. It applies for hardwares, too. Liberating closed hardware and software is a noble thing in my eyes, and it justifies piracy.
Only thing I've pirated was a show with no reasonable means to access it legitimately in my region. Hell, I couldn't even access it via VPN because the services it was on didn't accept my card due to region.
Normally of the mind that if it isn't worth my money it isn't worth my time, but in this case I just wasn't allowed to pay them for it. Hardly my fault when they've gone that far out of their way to block me buying it.
i enjoy stealing
I need the definition of pirating since it always means something different to someone else.
If I stream movies and shows using my friends library am I pirating? What if I download a show from my friends library for later viewing for personal use, then delete it a week later since I don't need it? Let's assume my friends library was all purchased legitimatly.
I did when I was young and broke. now I don't. 🤷♂️
Me? No! I wouldn't...
For me it's usually about availability. If someone suggests I try out a cool game that came out in the 80s, there's a pretty good chance piracy is the only way to play it. Sure, you can pay way too much on Ebay to get a physical copy, and I have a fair collection of retro games, but it's not like the money from Ebay sales go back to the original creators.
Same with movies. The version of Star Wars I grew up with, the one without all the digitally added stuff since the late 90s, isn't on Disney+. If Disney announced a nice blu-ray Star Wars collection that featured the copies without Jedi Rocks and the extra aliens in the cantina and whatever, I'd go out and get it. But they haven't, so I stick to the fan-made 'despecialized editions'.
I don't pirate from the little guy. I buy albums on Bandcamp and indie games on Steam all the time. I want the small creators to be able to eat. But I'm also fortunate enough to have a little disposable income. I know some people pirate as much as they can, and while I don't entirely agree with it, I don't know their financial situation (or the availability of these things in their country), so it's not really my place to judge them.
Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I'm now at a point where money isn't as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.
There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren't being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.
I want to support artists, but I will not pay for shit I've already pay for. I own an N64 and loads of games, I have the roms and will never pay a subscription to play worse versions in restricted conditions.
I will also not pay for the sports channels it is far too much. Where I am there are are like 3-4 different sports packages required to watch one league. Fuck that
I pirate the odd bit of music and the ocassional film if I cant find it on streaming services, or if I need music in MP3 format for swimming with, vast bulk of what I pirate is music though. And probably less than 10% of all the media I have is pirated. Make something easily available in the format I need at a reasonable price and I'll happily pay for it
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
i'm on basic welfare (400 dollars per month to afford everything i need) so yeah, i don't exactly have a choice..
If i don't see the value i'm pirating.
Money is tight, don't expect me to pay for a play button that you'll take away the second i can't spare the money. It means there is no value delivered for my money so i don't have a reason to spend my hard earned money.
Especially when the amouny is as significant as 10/15€. Fuck i would've bought a cd for each month i could spare that money.
I pirate almost all american media, movies, tv shows, games, etc because often there's no legal way to get it in my country until months after release, if at all. Which is bullshit considering it's japan, not some backwater 3rd world hell hole, so you'd think there'd be more options, but if it's not on Netflix or Disney+, you're shit outta luck.
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.
I regularly advocate for shows I pirate so I’m a walking ad for shows.
I pretty much only pirate content that's not readily available in my countrys streaming services.
About the only thing I pirate these days is stuff that isn't available to legally pay for in my country.
I pirate things because it's free and easy. My actions are not intended to serve any greater cause. There are some things I pay for out of convenience: pirated video games typically mean no official servers; Android apps are better managed automatically by the Google Play store.
I'm not gonna pay $200 just to play an old pokemon game. I do buy other games at my local shop though.
I tend to pirate and then buy later, when cheaper. Or for streaming services, I'll download a show as it airs but then purchase the service and background the series later to add viewership.
I think of it as time shifting the sale price.
People that pirate shows and movies don't do it necessarily because they can't afford to pay for it or want to "stick it" to the corporations. They pirate because they're human and humans get a level of joy from not getting caught doing something they're not supposed to be doing. I may be experiencing a level of joy right now but won't confirm nor deny it here.
When i was younger, physical copies pf games and the used market were common things. Now pc games get no physical release, or if they do these are tied to steam or epic games, and consoles are pushing towards going all digital.
All while raising the prices even though there is no logistics involved anymore.
So i should pay more for something that i can't resell and can get taken away from me for one of several reasons (account gets banned, game gets delisted, service eol...)?
So that's why if it can get pirated, i will pirate it.
I generally pirate first and buy later if I want to support a game. I think of it as voting with my wallet.
I pirated BG3, enjoyed it even though it’s generally not the sort of game I play. Decided that I want to see more companies making games of this quality in future, so went ahead and bought it.
Same with FromSoftware games, I always buy those as I want more games like that.
Ultimately, if you never buy anything then you can’t expect companies to make the games you want.
I agree with that
If something is not for sale, I have no qualms about pirating it. Disney vault, abandonware, obsolete versions, etc.
Yes. Because I can't afford either.
I don’t pirate at the moment but my philosophy is that if something is not available to buy, it is free to pirate in my book.
Otherwise, every company that makes a game and rakes in more than 100% profit from it is fair game imo. (That would be revenue devided by the engineer’s salaries, machines and office related stuff times 100. explicitly leaving out ceos overinflated salaries. They should not be tax deductible anyway.)
I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!
Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)
I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..
I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.
I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..
I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated
I only pirate when the company makes it extremely hard for me to pay for the product or I would be paying for a worse product than if I pirated.
For example, I watch a lot of hockey. The NHL has an idiotic system where I would need to pay for like 4 different services - including cable TV - to watch every game of my favorite team. They would all be in different places, so I would need to figure out where each game is being broadcast, then go to that service. Depending on the broadcaster, the quality may be finished (lower resolution or framerate). If I pirate the games, every game is on the same web page. Every game is 1080p at 60fps. I just click my bookmark and hit play when the game starts.
I'm in a good place financially, and I want to financially support things that I like so I can get more things that I like. But if a company isn't going to make a game available for me to buy, then it's getting pirated (Nintendo, I'm looking at you).
I do, movies and TV shows. Occasionally books, but I buy them much more often than I do pirate. When I was in my teens and early 20s I also pirated games, but I'm too lazy to do that anymore. Movies and TV shows are too fucking expensive for the value they provide. I also pay for a few streaming services, so I only pirate stuff that isn't there.
Not really, with books and movies I only buy/download when I want to watch/read. With games I buy a lot more than I play, but I don't pirate those, so it's not relevant.
I pirate media only, not games. Simply because I don't want to risk getting malware. Also too cheap to bother with streaming services; I want to own my media.
It's only piracy if you grab a cutlass and storm the local shops. It's time to call it what it is = digital theft / running unlicensed software / whatever. If someone hacks into your accounts, I doubt you'd call them a pirate for stealing all you personal videos and pictures, taking over your steam account, 'borrowing' your netflix, and so on. The whole thing is deeply uncool.
Personally I wish the laws would change to make copyright non-transferable from the original artists, who deserve reward for their efforts but shouldn't be a meal ticket for others. I'd also like to see abandonware legitimised - if folk can't buy it then it should be fair game.
I'm not the pirate I once was when it comes to gaming but there's always EGS exclusives, games whose lack of regional pricing make them impossible to reasonably buy here, things like that. I'm a patient gamer for the most part so most of the time I can just get it a few years down the line but sometimes even that doesn't cut it. I avoid doing it to indie developers, but those are usually the few that follow Steam's recommended pricing guidelines so they tend to be fine anyway.
I pirate unbelievable amounts of tv and movies on a regular basis though through the *arr apps and whatnot, mostly because I refuse to pay for a dozen different streaming services with their rotating content and usually terrible apps. I self host whatever I can to avoid relying on the whims of a few corporations, and the one surviving service so far is Spotify.
Nowadays, not a whole lot. I have more money than I have media consumption time, no matter the type. There are still exceptions for situations where nobody wants my money, where I also feel that even calling it a form of "theft" is a bit rich simply because... what potential sale or income is being lost? Nobody wants to make money with it! I'd happily pay, it's just that there's no one there to receive the money!
I pirate a lot of movies and series and also a few books.
I also sometimes pirate games but not as often
I don't justify it. I think it's a bad thing but I like cheap.
Working minimum wage or struggling with money for any reason shall not mean you cannot have nice things in life, never. So I do the thing. Sometimes. Normalizing spending money into things you physically cannot touch is one thing i could get over with, like buying GOG (DRM free) games i'll actually end up playing, but licenses to play a dang video game that is valid for god knows how long? This is where I draw the line.
Your friend is right: when them corpos suck us dry, we gotta suck em back. It is easy as that.
Furthermore: It's not piracy when paying for it is not owning it.
I just do whatever's easiest -- just signing up for some of these services takes way too long to watch one 2 hour program. The money's not an issue at all in my mind, im happy to pay $70 for baldurs gate 3 with a dedicated download server and installation package. But im not willing to spend half an hour downloading and installing some streaming service.
I used to pirate a lot more when I couldn't afford to fill my media desires. Nowadays I'm a bit more principalled, I'm not paying collector prices for old super Nintendo games for instance. That shit gets emulated and if I've already bought a game on console, especially if I bought a standard and "complete" edition, I'll likely piratd a PC copy for modding and the like.
Yes to movies and shows that aren't available on Netflix, Disney, or Amazon. My kids watch a lot of shows on those, so they're worth it, but I refuse to pay for others.
No to everything else.
for legal reasons, I don't pirate anything.. but a friend told me that piracy is more convenient, and that it has more benefits (like, retain 'ownership' of content without annoying DRM)
train of thought (legal): what streaming service do I need to subscribe to to watch this? okay lemme go grab my wallet and sign up for an account
train of thought (piracy): click download
if companies don't want you to pirate their media, they should make it more convenient and flexible to purchase legally. adding DRM and making things subscription-only will push more people towards piracy.
I don't care about copyrights, and although I'd agree that I'm not entitled to someone else's work, I'll counterfeit it without a single qualm. I'm poor and would rather not have to choose between being well fed but bored as death, or hungry but entertained/educated. As much as possible, I try to support the little guys though; concretely, I'll eventually buy a game made by Octavi Navarro or Unspeakable Pixels, but Activision won't ever receive a kopeck from me.
I used to quite a bit, for random, hard to find songs. I also did it to get in digital format, what I owned on vinyl. A few older classic movies here and there. I can’t remember the last time I pirated anything, but I still use torrents for bootleg concerts.
My relevant philosophy, if that's the right word, is linked to on my Lemmy bio. Written more than a year ago, it's still defaulted to. Someone on Lemmy told me it's the most socialist-esque thing they've ever seen from me.
I do.
Nope, not really.
Life's about more than money.
When I was younger (< 25) I would pirate loads - music, films, tv shows, games etc. The main driver was that I was poor and wouldn't have paid for them anyway, but also it was convenience , streaming services weren't around yet so it was the only way to consume digital products.
Now that I'm older and have a decent salary, I don't do it anymore. I'm happy to pay for Spotify and have a really easy experience, or use Amazon or Netflix. I don't play PC games anymore either. The only act of piracy I do now will be the very odd occasion where I watch to watch a full F1 race that I missed, but the service that I pay for might not have uploaded the race for up to 24 hours later. I don't want to wait because I run the risk of coming across spoilers and I'm eager to watch what happened, and seeing as I'm already paying for the service to watch the race I don't see what the issue is by seeing it a bit earlier.
People who say piracy is theft are wrong, actually holders of intellectual property are thieves that are stealing that what should belong to the public domain. When you pirate you make a copy of something, you don't take anything away from the other person. That's fundamentally different from theft. When you force people to pay for a free resource (copying data) you are creating artificial scarcity. To think that construction is helping society in any way is fooling yourself. It's very clearly limiting human creativity and freedom. Allowing people to do with it as they please free of charge would allow for better ideas and applications to emerge. When someone comes up with an idea (a medicine, product, song, whatever) they claim it as theirs and no-one can touch it. Look at it this way: someone invents the wheel. The wheel is a concept that is out their, waiting to be discovered by someone. Before it was discovered it was readily available for anyone to discover, but than someone finally invents it and suddenly he can claim it as his? Is the first one to discover the moon, the one who owns it? Ultimately songs and books and such are not fundamentally different. Also, no-one writes a songs out of nothing, you build upon the ideas of others. You walk the path, use all the stepping stones laid down by others, it brings you to a point and suddenly it's all yours? It doesn't make any sense at all, but we're so used to it that we can't see it for what it is. It's a scam. It's a monopoly and it doesn't belong in a free society. You should support creators and be thankful for their efforts, that's why trademarks should exist, if you want to buy the copy from the author himself you should know which product to buy through the trademark, which one is by the original creator and which copies are from third-parties. But all other intellectual property is theft from the public domain.
I think what you might be referring to is the Paradox of Choice -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
I like stealing
I pirate to try things, if I like it I pay for it. I have games on Steam with less than an hour played but most achievements unlocked because after finishing the game I purchased it.
I think pirates are cool but the download links they put to make you download viruses are not cool
I want? I pirate. It loses no value. If the price is right I'll support smaller guys when I can, but shit is only getting more expensive, so I support less these days.
Shits getting expensive and I'm not getting richer. I think I'd be stupid to not pirate.
Shit really is getting expensive.
I don't pirate video games. Steam, Gog, or even epic are easy and not too expensive. Steam's refund policy isnt terrible.
I don't pirate music. I buy stuff from smaller artists on Bandcamp, and use free Spotify/YouTube/old stuff I ripped myself from CDs (I'm old). Though honestly I don't have a problem with pirating music that's like 10+ years old. Copyright law is too long.
I don't pirate books. I get them from the library.
I may have downloaded some RPG books because I wanted more of a skim than I could find online, didn't really trust reviewers to have my exact set of preferences, and didn't want to pay the whole amount for a game I wasn't sure I'd like. The ones I did like and use I bought.
I don't really watch anything so it didn't even occur to me to list it.
Specifically for books I pirate because I get a better product this way. I prefer reading on my phone and downloading an epub means I can open it in any app I want, add chapters and share it with whoever I want. If I could easily pay for a book and get the same experience without any drm or online account bullshit I would probably do it.
Physical books are also ok but buying anything not in my language means possibly waiting forever for it to arrive and paying more for transit costs. I may still do it if I really want to support the author but I'd rather have a way to pay them directly tbh.
When you download epub files directly to your phone do you take any precautions? (Does there need to be any precautions?)
That's a good question, I'm not sure. I just make sure the file has the correct extension and it's opened with the correct app. I've never had an issue on android but I mostly download from the same site which seems to have good files (and always with adblock).
I pay for my audiobook streaming because it doesn't cost so much and you cannot pirate the books I listen to anyway
I pirate a ton of stuff, but I also see more movies in theaters than most people I know. I'm lucky enough to live in a place that still has an awesome local video store that has a ton of hard to find, obacure films. Like shaw brothers kung fu films, or documentaries like Jefftowne.
Yes.
When I feel like doing it.
Even assuming I were a billionaire, my guideline is: Company acts nice? Take my bucks. Scummy practices, fragmentation, region locking, etc? Sail the seas
I used to pirate like crazy in my youth. Now since Steam and Netflix I don't pirate, recognizing that creators deserve to get paid and also by paying them that supports making more content.
I feel good seeing how the corpos squirm when trying their damndest to get rid of any pirating method (which is fair and what everyone in the world deserves free of charge by birth) only to be met with impossible tasks and fall flat on their faces. It's one of the better feelings in this world. I pirate everything, everywhere, unless I know I can help a talented (and actual) human out.
It is noble and dare i say, even cool and funny to download (evilly).
Generally stuff like Steam games I'll pay for, especially now that I can afford it. I have no qualms with people pirating things if they can't afford it, like teens, students, between jobs, on social security, people living in a country with an undervalued currency. To me it's not stealing, it's expanded access to knowledge, and unlike stealing benefits companies who get much better reach and recommendation than if the price tag (or stupid DRM) stopped them from trying.
When I do pirate something, I often treat it as a demo, like I can play the game to get the feel but no/limited networking features, no updates etc.. I don't like having to pay and refund something if I was just going to try it out. If a friend wants an idea of how a game is like, I give them a copy I bought after removing DRM if I can. Often times they go and buy their own copy because it's a cool game, when they don't it probably wasn't interesting enough to complete.
Sometimes there are just too many middlemen taking a cut here and there that I would rather obtain something in contravention of copyright then provide value back to the creator more directly if I could. Steam, a rare exception for me, justifies their value through their robust update, social, modding, Linux supporting ecosystem.
i only pirate things that i do not "need" and i would not purchase no matter the price - typically movies and shows that are not on the streaming platforms i pay for.
if pirating that thing isn't an option, i'll just do without it. so in my eyes the creator is not losing any sales from me since i would not be paying for it in any scenario.
When I was a broke-ass college student I pirated a lot of things. When I started working properly and finally had my own means, I started buying basically everything. Then the post-covid world brought a lot of changed to my life and income and I'm a little back on the piracy train.
There's a lot of factors, for me. If I want to support a product, I won't pirate it. I recently picked up Sea of Stars, because it's a small team indie title made with love, and it shows. Likewise, if I am on the fence about something for some reason, I may "demo" it first and if it keeps my attention, I'll end up buying it.
Sometimes there's past experiences that keep me off of some games. I strictly won't buy Ubisoft's PC releases, and haven't played an Assassin's Creed game in years because of that. After every debacle with them, between uPlay, account issues and the performance/quality of their PC ports, they just don't deserve my money.
Ebooks often cost more than paper books, they're also easily pirate-able, mainly due to their small size, so my Kindle has almost... 600MB of wArEz
Pirated games some long time ago, if I liked it I bought it, it's a nice way to test how a game runs on my machine, there were almost no demos a few years ago, now more and more games have them, also you can test some of them with subscriptions like gamepass
Also streaming subscriptions are too fragmented, that IMO justices occasional piracy
I don't really pirate much anymore, because I don't consume much paid media anymore. Occasionally, if I really, really want to watch something on a platform that I don't have a free subscription to (through a phone plan or isp), I will find a stream of it, but that is rare.
I justify it by generally not being on favor of modern IP laws. On a less ideological basis, fuck'em for making their content inaccessible. And from the current strikes, it looks like most of their talent doesn't get much of a cut anyways.
I haven't pirated a game in years, just because Steam is so convenient, and I can pay for more games than I have time to play. In the past, when I couldn't afford all the games I had time to play, I would pirate them. I couldn't afford them, so it was no "potential loss" for them anyways.
For software other than games, there is usually an adequate Free Software alternative, so I just use those. I am a developer, so sometimes I make small contributions on software I use a lot, and have a good understanding of.
Haven't pirated music since big streaming services became available (first, Play Music, now Spotify). I do kinda feel bad that Spotify pays shit though. I would happily pay the artists directly if it was convenient.
I pirate and I think doing so should be legal and accepted. It's one thing to have a copyright for profitable uses of some content, a whole other much crazier thing to say copyright forbids sharing that content for free. File sharing should be thought of the same way as letting your friend borrow your book - just a normal and uncontroversial nice thing to do, that you shouldn't avoid based on some concern it will lead to lower book sales.
I'll stop pirating when creators get paid their fair share. Before that, support them directly or sail the great blue
Yes I pirate everything.
I don't really understand the justification question. What is there to be justified? I'm not hurting or harming anyone.
Supporting content creators by paying for access is just idiocy.
It's a bit like disabling your ad blocker to pay content creators by viewing ads - happy to let idiots do that on my behalf.
You know, I don't mind pirating at all, but people with your mindset are just disgusting. How about you're a little grateful to the "idiots"?
That's my point though. Thinking your subscription fees are rewarding content creators is daft.
Does this apply to Patreon? I don't think of that as daft. I think many content creators rely on it.
No, I support a few podcasts on patreon. Payments direct to creators is a much better model and I'm happy to support it. I meant "subscription fee" as in streaming services.
If you're supporting someone on Patreon, you're not really purchasing their content from a third party, are you?
I was really replying to the subscription fee comment. I can imagine a scenario where someone is subscribing to a CC's Patreon but pirating their content (or just streaming it without ads with an ad blocker). ETA: So that the CC solely gets the money, not the publisher/hosting service.
You are a German are you not? How do you pirate? (.de makes me think you are German, sorry If I am wrong)
No, not German.
Man, what an echo chamber of anti-corporation and anti-copyright sentiments. I pirate myself, because the services for tv/movies are not convenient, but I don't delude myself into thinking it's somehow justified. If I could get any movie or series on demand like spotify I wouldn't pirate (if I could afford it). I fail to see how anything else would be ethical to the creators of the content.
I pirate everything that i cannot afford. Lately it's gotten to the point that i can afford everything but before i had Money i would pirate all games that looked interesting.
I just didnt wanna lose money that i barely had saved.
And no, my interest in the thing i stole never had any impact from the pricetag.
I liked the thing, thats why i wanted it.
And i do not understand people that try to make theft morally okay.
It is not okay to steal from Target the same way it is not okay to steal from EA.
If you can afford it just buy the things.
I made up exceptions to this rule to make myself feel less guilty. At the end of the day the reason was that i was poor and i couldnt accept that i couldnt get a thing.
I don't pirate because I'm an adult who makes money and respects creators.
Hollywood is at war with the people of this world and are therefore my enemy, I treat my enemies as I wish. Unfortunately, they don't have a lot I'm interested in lately. I don't find myself watching movies or TV much, if ever.
Music... It's available on YouTube. I think most things I have pirated I have purchased a license for already.
I don't play games. Games like old NES games are no longer available for purchase except on the secondary market, I think there should be a law about enforcing piracy laws on IP that is no longer available for purchase. People who archive it are doing God's work.
I only use FOSS software.
Books... Its no different from a library in my opinion, it's not like I'm going to need to read it twice, what's the difference if I borrow it or download it if I'm going to have it in my head after reading it exactly once? I can't even lend it to someone! A lot of the books I have read were created solely for the purpose of making the information available.
Generally speaking, intellectual property is a fiction, and once you release information out in the world it's no longer yours practically speaking, you can whine all you want and create mechanisms to try to stop it from being true but it is true. It takes on a life of it's own and spreads on it's own merit.
We can't talk about that here.
I just started pirating again in the last couple of months after basically not pirating for years. Now fuck corporations lol.
I pirate books for a few reasons, first is because knowledge should be free, second is because buying books gets expensive real quick and third because I can't find everything I want to buy, sometimes pirating is the only way to get it. I like to have it physically when possible, tho.
Entertainment (Series, Anime, Cartoons, Movies) I pirate because I'm sick of being a second class citizen of nearly every streaming service just because I'm a Linux user. I can watch netflix at 1080p with an extension on Firefox, and Crunchyroll doesn't limit me in any way, but everything else is 720p or lower. By pirating, I even have 4k available. Also, fuck streaming prices and fuck netflix for charging extra for sharing an account.
Software I don't pirate because I prefer to use FOSS and in the case of games I don't really wanna gamble if I'll get a malware or not. Besides, I have a huge respect for the medium and I buy a game whenever I can.
For music Spotify and Youtube is too convenient, I only pay for Spotify, tho. Revanced for Youtube on mobile and ublock origin + sponsorblock + return youtube deslikes on desktop is great.
Besides all that, everyone should have access to knowledge and entertainment, it's 100% justified for people to pirate, specially those that can't afford it.
When I used to pirate heavily a decade ago yeah, today not really, buying or not my ADHD is so bad I can't get through easily anyway lol.
I pirate stuff that is older then 7 years. If I want to see it, or play it earlier than that, I pay for it.
Only if it's a pain in the ass to get. It is stealing and somehow that was lost on an entire generation.