I’ve been pirating since I was a child. That being said, I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to pin ‘media pirating’ as a personality trait.
Yeah, I basically stopped pirating entirely despite doing it relentlessly early in life. I still owe Capcom a thousand bucks if I am to pay that one alone back.
The basically part is that I still pirate what little music I need. Fuck the music industry.
My exception is smaller bands with bamdcamp.
Buying from there supports the artists well!
Do you know what community this is?
participating in a community ≠ making it a lifestyle
I think a lot of people in this community consider it a lifestyle to pirate media.
I think most just don’t give a fuck. Definitely not enough fucks to make it a lifestyle.
Yes, why?
deleted by creator
Yup. Pirating is about filling a need where companies sorely lack in providing services. When a company provides a shitty service or offers no viable alternative to obtaining something I would gladly pay for, pirating bridges that gap.
Why not?
Because, at the end of the day, we’re basically just downloading commodity entertainment. There’s nothing directly substantive about that and that’s fine. Not everything we do needs to become a direct part of our identity.
Oh. Omg you’re so right lol.
Anon willl soon be 14 years old
Ah, to be young and -6 years old again
People lying on the Internet?
They can’t do that, that’s wrong
My coworkers were talking today about all the hoops they were going through with streaming to find the content they wanted and navigating the byzantine extra charges to share it with their family. If piracy wasn’t an option I still wouldn’t go through all that, it’s madness how much worse the paid service is to the high seas.
Yup. My gf has Netflix but for one of our shows, the English subtitles disappeared (she’s ESL). Took like 15 minutes to figure it out, but happened again the next day. Now we pirate that show because it’s easier, even though she has it on Netflix.
Also used someone else’s Netflix to finally hit the attack on titan craze some years back.
No english subs. Have to read the local language. Whatever. The names were not accurately translated. Whatever. I could look past that since they were consistent within the subs as presented.
Season 2 - all the names changed from season 1. Even something as simple as changing a K to a C is too much and unacceptable, but the fuckers were straight up changing the name of the militaty units and shit. I had no idea who was who.
20 minutes later, I’m watching the HorribleSubs version with the worldwide-accepted English names and I never watched anime on Netflix. Piracy is a service problem.
I have Netflix and Amazon and I still pirate a bunch of stuff, sometimes I even forget to check if something is available there before torrenting it
If you have enough money to live comfortably, I think you should pay for art you love. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pirate anything (especially from big corps), but please donate some money to indie games, music, theatre…
Heck, I’d say even give money to those big corps so long as they are being reasonable with the price and availability. Reasonable varies by person, of course. But for me, I’ll pay for any $70-90 game (the normal price for new games now in Canada), but stuff like Sims DLC or how the original Mass Effect only let you get DLC through some dumb BioWare credits are cases where I’d pirate no regrets even with my current income.
After all, there won’t be AAA games if people don’t pay for them. I have (mostly) no qualms with big publishers pocketing a significant profit on those games if they get made well. Bigger problem I have is with games that get rushed to the point of impacting quality, but that’s something I see more for changing how you approach that individual title. Stuff like mistreating staff (crunch time) is a bit iffier. I still lean towards giving them my money, since nobody enters the game dev business without knowing it’ll involve crunch and I do want the devs to be rewarded for their hard work with a commercial success (cause that’s unfortunately just how success is measured in our capitalist society).
I’d recommend only buying good / unique / finished games for $90 - buying any game for that much will just encourage them to keep releasing mediocre trash (mostly talking about series like COD, assassin’s Creed, etc.)
Aye, I used to sail the high seas, the hull of my ship gnarly with viruses, adware and malware from some infectious crackers or key-generators.
Then I had money, and started buying my software and my movies and all was good for a time. Then my media consume shifted to mobile devices, but I had Amazon Prime Video as the only really available video-streaming service around and all was good for a time. Then I added Netflix, as it arrived on my countries market and all was good for a time. Then I added Crunchyroll, Disney+ and Hulu and everything sucked, streaming the shows I wanted to watch was suddenly so expensive, no single streaming service had everything I wanted to watch, so I needed to subscribe to them all, costing an amount of money I would not spend on buying those shows.
Now I have unsubscribed from all but two again, but the market is so fractured, there is barely anything interesting on the services I still go to.
So my eyes keep wandering to that old tricorn, the hook and peg-leg, gathering dust on the wall. I can hear the waves crashing and feel the tide rising in my bones. The moneybags have decided to press us for more and more, their greed means no single harbor, not even two are enough to supply our demands. So there is plenty of bounty to be found on the high seas again, big fat galleons full of content otherwise unreachable or too expensive.
Doncha hear it boys? Davey Jones is singing again, calling us back to the sea, put on your VPN, defy the torrents and right your compasses with a good magnet. We did not choose this life, they made us turn to it.
lmao is this copypasta
It is now.
if you have enough money, pay for stuff you like.
Why should I?
You’re right. If you can afford something you like you should steal it, it’s much better. Whenever I go into a library I just take a bag and dump all the books and take them home. Why should I put in the effort of wasting my time(meaning money I could have earned) signing a library card when I can just steal? It’s THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY. That’s how I stay RICH. I never pay. Whenever I see someone about to pay for something they want I just steal their money, why should they keep it if they’re not smart enough to not waste it? Their money is much safer with me. The apartment I’m currently living in is so cheap, because I never pay. I just changed all the locks, have triple bolts on all the doors and just stay here. It’s mine, it’s free and they can’t kick me out because I won’t let them. Why should I pay for the internet when it’s basically flowing free through these wires and air? I just take some from my neighbor. When I go to a coffee shop I just grab the first drink I see that’s on the counter. If they’re not fast enough to take their drink, I take it, it’s just sitting there, it’s free.
steal
Tldr~ the comment isn’t relevant as piracy isn’t stealing
Just curious, why do you not consider piracy stealing? It seems to me that if you take something of value from someone without compensation then that might as well be stealing
The hunt is part of the fun. Like how people will opt to build a PC or a keyboard over a pre-built or pull out vinyl over digital. The steps taken to retrieve and enjoy the media is sometimes a relaxing process.
Yeah, no.
The hunt is only fun if you’ve got time to spare.
Throw in a spouse, kids, good but demanding job, a place to live, social obligations, detoriating (geriatric) parents, and you’re so happy you can just mash one single button and your favourite track, game or series starts to play.
That’s the reason why people stop pirating. Time.
When time is not (yet) your most precious resource you can see the fun in anything. Even virus scanning.
and you’re so happy you can just mash one single button and your favourite track, game or series starts to play.
yes, that’s why I pay for some things and pirate others, because for me pirating is often significantly easier and less time consuming than paying
[something] is sometimes a relaxing process
Yeah, no.
What are you pirating that makes it so hard? I don’t bother with software or programs so it’s just pretty much looking at what’s newly released and torrenting it.
Why even pirate if it’s that much of a pain? Pretty much same logic to me a someone who complains about how confusing pc gaming is. I’d point to the consoles.
Don’t have kids then. Much more free time.
I don’t understand
- Making the deliberate choice of having kids
- Complaining about missing out on other things because of said kids
Also, complaining about not having time but wasting their time talking to strangers online. I could understand the perspective from someone who doesn’t pirate, but to a pirate it is pretty hilarious seeing them making it out as this incredibly difficult time consuming thing like infomercials do.
Really? I could understand that point from someone not in the piracy community, but doesn’t seem any more time consuming than posting on lemmy. Not really starved for time if someone is spending their time on social media.
Mind you I don’t pirate software or games, so maybe that’s why. Pretty much hardest has been waiting for download to finish.
I’m heading back to it.
The streaming was sort of OK, and now it’s wank. Spread across dozens of services, that don’t have enough content to justify their existence. No UI linking them all together means you have no idea if something is available or not without checking justwatch.com
If music was like this, I’d pirate that too.
Doesn’t plex have an UI for all of them? I use plex to watch my media and I saw an option to add your streaming services.
I think that’s just doing the Justwatch style thing. It’s a start, but it’s not a true integration.
Sad thing is, I’m pretty sure Netflix used to encourage you to make your own UI for it. Then they blocked it all.
The Plex watchlists seemed stupid and pointless to me…until someone pointed out you can subscribe to your Plex watchlist in Radarr/Sonarr. Now, I can watch trailers on Plex, add stuff, and it shows up automatically when released. Super convenient.
At least Chromecast for TV basically does this. I can search for something and it will tell me all the ways I can watch for any installed app even unsubscribed.
Still, the issue of paying multiple monthly fees to see what you want is ludicrous. It’s as if the media companies maliciously complied with consumers’ desire to pick and choose what they watch rather than pay $200 a month for 1000 stations they don’t watch.
Now, you have to pay $200 to get all the services that have what you want to watch - and you still have to sift through the drek.
Much better, that. /s
I’ve pirated almost everything for the last 30 years from msdos on. But I wouldn’t say it’s a lifestyle. It’s just that most of the stuff I would never buy. I don’t need them, they are not important, but maybe I want a taste. I don’t pirate music anymore because it’s not practical and some of the software. Some. Games I don’t play much anymore, but I would pirate them until I have like 50 hours in. Then I start thinking maybe it makes sense to buy. Unless it turns out cracked version is better than official one.
I’ve been pirating for twenty years and you do kind of just stick with it even when you can afford stuff.
That said, when I reinstalled Windows a while ago, I was fannying about for aaaaaages trying to get a cracked version of Office to work when I suddenly realised I could just buy it for a tenner and not have to fuck about 😂 It hadn’t occurred to me before
Yeah office is literally the only thing that’s not worth it. Lifetime office 2019 is like 20 euro. This will die out with the subscription shit taking place though
Wasn’t it like 120€ ten years ago?
they might be talking about those questionably-legal licenses off ebay
Idk. It’s a real website and Company that I pay. But the license itself could be sus.
Yep, it’s likely a sus licence, but when it eventually refuses to work, a quick phone call to MS and they just say “Fuck it, go on then”. Call centre people don’t care where you got it 😅
I’m well over 25 years of sailing now (40 if you count games for early PCs), and they’ll pry the sabre out of my cold, dead hands. I’ve made not watching ads a lifestyle and piracy is so much easier than dealing with the bullshit interfaces of streaming companies.
If I have a way of directly donating to creators and not via their shitty production companies, I’ll take it. Podcasts have it right, I can send money to creators and get an ad-free stream. If I can’t, I don’t donate and I don’t listen to their work.
In the end, me avoiding ads isn’t costing anyone anything, because if I hear an ad, I likely avoid that product going forward. They have at best zero effect on my buying decisions, if not a negative one.
YTA
If you have money to spend (and THAT much), you can still pirate, but if you pirate without trying to fund the source of your art and tools, you’re a mega asshole. Especially if you have as much money as this dude claims to have. You can find the creators of your games online, find their ko-fis, their patreons. Where there’s a will there’s a way
Cringe af
I think for movies and music this is totally true. Video games less so but not impossible
I can’t think of the last game I wanted to play that wasn’t cracked within week 1
I always pay for vijia but I wait for like a year or two and get em at a heavy discount.
I haven’t bought a movie or a music in 20 years. Well that’s a lit, I bought a bunch of FLACs from a guy whose music I loved because he’s a small artist and I want to see him bigger.
Other than that… movie, shows, and a music are a YOINK
