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The pirates are back - Anew study from the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) suggest that online piracy has increased for the first time in years. In fact, piracy rates have bee…::We analyze a new study where the EUIPO suggests online piracy is on the increase within the European Union.
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- Need a subscription to +5 services to see all the content & shows.
- Ads being forced into paid services.
- Unfinished AAA games now cost +$70 USD.
- All games now have battlepasses and FOMO.
All I need is one VPN subscription.
Wow that wording, trying to make pirating sound like an evil crime lol. I feel no moral negativity pirating. In fact, my conscience is clean and I feel morally obligated to, considering how expensive they are making services.
I think reading between the lines is the real story: when they get greedy, pirating puts them I check and causes pricing to become affordable and people stop pirating. Once people are not pirating, greed increases and pirates have to return to put them in place again.
In conclusion… we need pirates to balance things out, this pirating is a necessity in our modern age…
You are welcome everyone, I am doing my part for myself and I am doing my part for you.
Another reason why piracy is needed is to prevent pieces of culture from being erased from history to satisfy some perverse corporate accounting requirements.
Fucking rights
They call “refusing to be exploited” piracy. Generally industries where there are huge monopolies like media, groceries, and other such thing are most sensitive to this because they lack the ability to deal with outside pressures any more.
Vilifying people fighting back is the cheapest way to manage this.
I’m kinda looking forward to seeing what replaces things like Netflix and Spotify
Yeah it should be interesting. I’m also looking forward to see what new trackers come into relevance as the userbase increases.
Redacted as the only viable music tracker is a real shame. Just like everything else, we need more options not less.
I really felt like all the good stuff was only on private trackers the last few years. A few of the biggest public trackers also went down, that certainly didn’t help, but even before that I had a hard time finding some older, rarer things. If piracy gets bigger, I hope to see more reliable public trackers again with bigger catalogues.
Companies are stealing from you every single day of your life from the second you’re born to the moment you die.
No harm in returning the favor.
My 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ brother
I’ve started to pirate games again, which I never saw a reason to in 15 years. Simply because 2 hours refund window isn’t enough for the crap they sell now. Performance from hell and half assed story after you left the tutorial.
Gamepass kind of stopped me a bit on that, but it’s a subscription and only a matter of time till there’s competition with exclusives and increased price.
Games also got too expensive, there’s more competition than ever and I earn less money than my parents used to, I simply can’t pay that much, yet the games start to cost 90€ upwards. So even if I buy a key, it’s still 65€ or more, for an often broken game. No thank you.
Just wait, dude. Prices on games come down so fast, there’s really not much reason to pirate.
I feel like they used to do this, now it’s a crapshoot. My Steam wishlist has become rife with games I’m kind of interested in, but never go on enough of a sale for me to seriously consider. Which is honestly probably not a problem given I already have more games than I’m likely to finish in my lifetime at the rate I play them now.
Not an option. I dislike spoiler and I need a new PC to play coop games with friends anyways. What’s the point of a new expensive PC if I play only old games? I also don’t feel like participating in gaming communities much, if everything has been discovered 1 or 2 years before me. No one gives a fuck if I find out some cool hidden features, if it has been discussed already and everyone can watch 1000 better YouTube guides. Playing on release is great entertainment for me and always will be.
I’m gonna be honest, for me, everything you said there is precisely why I like being a patient gamer. Can play all the games I want without spending as much on hardware or on the games themselves. Am playing the most completed and patched version of the game. Have heaps of resources available online to help me optimise my gameplay.
And that’s totally fine. I wish people would show more empathy, on why I don’t enjoy it the same way as you do. You also lose a lot on being not part of any current community. Patient gamer is a valid way, unless you play online games or care about the points I mentioned above.
When someone shares an opinion online, it’s like people think it’s supposed to be an argument to win and you are wrong, it’s annoying as shit. I get irritated seeing comments like your first one get downvoted lol.
Yeah I get it. I actually originally was going to include a whole bit where I emphasised that I’m not saying my way is the right way and I think yours is completely genuine. I removed that part because I didn’t want to waffle on too much and hoped the sentiment would get across anyway.
That said:
You also lose a lot on being not part of any current community
This is simply untrue. Players of older games often form the most highly-invested and passionate communities. That includes online games. My most-played game on Steam is a 2019 remake of a 1999 game with a strong casual and competitive multiplayer scene which has been very much alive, in different forms, continuously over that whole 24 year period.
I totally get wanting to play the game when it’s fresh. You miss out on being part of the buzz of a new game if you wait to play it. Every gaming site is full of memes about a new game for the first few months after release and it’s definitely part of the experience to be on the “in” side of that.
With that said, I just pick and choose which games matter to me for that nowadays, and I commit myself to actually beating the games I buy (assuming I don’t hate them). Committing to beating them before buying a new game has really cut back on my buying of new games only to have it languish in my backlog and see price drops before I ever play it.
This way I do get to be part of that community for the games that really matter to me, but I also am not just buying everything out there at full price.
Tried crusader kings 3 on game pass, I liked the game but every tube after 30min or an hour, the windows drm would have a hiccup and close the game, ended up getting a cracked version, while still paying for the subscription, never had a crash again… fuck this shitty drm.
Crusader kings 3 (just like all other Paradox Games) doesn’t even have DRM. You can start the whole game without steam or the shitty PDX launcher, so no idea what you are on about. A “cracked” version is the exact same piece of software.
Not a built in one, the one injected by windows store/Xbox game pass for windows.
Not to mention cracked games let you avoid the company’s terrible launcher (looking at you uplay). Steaming pile of unnecessary garbage. I have cracked copies of a lot of the games I own for reasons like that, Pirated games just have a better offline experience in my opinion. Online games are another story.
I just keep playing the same game I’ve played since 2004 and I’m fine with that.
I just cancelled my Netflix that I had for like 10 years. Total shit nothing to watch.
Now there’s a million services, everything is plus. Paramount+, Disney+, Nutsack+
Even if I wanted to pay for all that shit, everyone has their own shitty app I have to install and configure and have a login and fuck you.
It’s just easier for me to torrent what I want.
Now there’s a million services, everything is plus. Paramount+, Disney+, Nutsack+
I think the + is to streaming services what the i prefix was to electronic junk.
I pay for them still. But still download and watch on Plex. Oh shit I meant a friend of mine does this.
Thing is, I’m not averse to paying for good content, I like to support the creators. But
When every show is on a different app and they’re all $15 a month…buying a couple hard drives and saving every show just makes more financial sense and I don’t need 15 different login credentials so fuck off yarrr
I’ve apparently gotten a subscription to nutsack+!
Time to make a Dr appointment.
Nutsack+ 🤣🤣
2015: Share your Netflix between four people, everyone pays $4 per month, have access to 80% of all online content. The interface is shit but you keep up with it because it is cheap.
2023: You pay $20 for Netflix, pay $15 for Disney, pay $15 for Hulu, pay $10 for Amazon Prime, $15 for Discovery, $15 for Paramount, $15 for Youtube, have access to 50% of all online content. The interface is still shit and you wonder why you pay for that shit.
Joe Average: 🏴☠️😎🏴☠️😎🏴☠️😎🏴☠️😎🏴☠️😎🏴☠️ and the interface is easier than ever.
My 2013 Highest-End Smart-TV barely works with Youtube and no longer with anything else. But Burning Series still works marvellous. Another thing: “Consuming” pirated content is not “illegal” in Germany. It is a violation of private property which the rights owner can sue in a civil court. But as long as you don’t use P2P services where you also upload - which would indeed be a fellony - he can not detect what you do and can not take any action against you - so One-Click-Hosters and Warez-Streaming is totally safe. And if the rights owner could find out about you he could at most send you a cease-and-desist-order with a one-time-fee of at max $100 because it is a minor incident. As far as I know there was never a user of Warez-Streaming who paid anything.
The only bad thing: DNS is nowadays filtered at the big Telcos and Providers which means I have to change the DNS inside my Routers to Cloudflare and Google. Which are a lot faster anyway.
When the world is either ad-supported or locked behind a paywall or, worse, both, this is what will happen.
Adds would be fine if they were unobtrusive, sidebar adds or hell those little bars that scroll across the bottom 10th of the screen like a news headline I’d be fine with those things. Its when the adds actually obstruct my ability to enjoy the product that I take issue.
I wonder how many people have an ad tolerance like me. Those ads are fine for most people but I get so annoyed by even that. The entire concept upsets me. I don’t want to be told what I’m supposed to want, ever, by some corporation unless I ask them.
Ads that permit code to run locally are a security hazard. That’s most ad platforms.
I’d deal with intrusive ads just fine (and when I was younger I used to), but I run an adblocker and noscript for security reasons. Unobtrusive ads don’t change that for me.
Services get worse so piracy gets more popular.
Yeah. 2 things stop piracy, a fair price and quality content. We don’t have either.
We had it, then the corporate greed came in. But hey Netflix subscribers have risen again…fun…
Yup. The enshitification of … everything.
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free! Yarr harr fiddle dee dee!
MULLVAD! WIREGUARD! QUANTUM SECURE ENCRYPTION!
Sorry I have Tourette’s syndrome.
QBITTORRENT!
ADNAUSEAM! AVAILABLE FOR CHROMIUM BASED BROWSERS TOO!
No more port forwarding with Mullvad. You’ll have to use another.
Port forwarding is a security hole.
Torrenting works without it just fine.
Not that I would ever pirate anything. That’s would be immoral! After all…Billionaires schemed, lied and stepped on SO MANY people to get to be where they are!
How are billionaires supposed to afford their giant palace-sized mansions or their diamond-dusted platinum-plated Ferraris with ivory interiors if we pirate things?
Nah port forwarding is required on at least one end to make connections with peers. You can download files without it provided the seeders have PF setup but you won’t be able to seed anything, which breaks the fundamentals of P2P. This will also get you banned from private trackers if you’re not seeding. With a VPN the forwarded port is through them not on your router so security isn’t really an issue here.
I’m able to seed without it
Not that I would ever pirate anything! That would be immoral to steal a tiny infinitesimal amount money from billionaires
Man, I forgot how old that was. RIP to the guy as well, such a genuine bloke, IRL moreso than the Sportacus character.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s almost like making it nearly impossible to watch what we want and, at the same time, octupling our bills, while also increasing the cost of each would, somehow, force people into the desperation of piracy. Huh. Who woulda thunk it.
Let’s not forget random pulling of content so that you can never tell if what you want is actually on any given service at any given time. This was the final straw that led me to rebuilding my own media collection.
we will never be defeated
It’s like no longer having one cheap and convinient way of seeing content makes people rather pirate things than paying 7 different platforms each one more expensive than the next and all of them trying to mess with you and your wallet in new and unexpected ways.
I’m literally paying money to pirate content. $20 a year and I can stream anything from Netflix, apple, Disney, HBO, etc through a single app. So much less hassle.
Oh? What are you paying for?
HD, free version tops out at 720
I think they were wondering what service you use
Ah, yes that would make sense lol
Don’t like to mention it in comments in case it gets too much attention and shut down. I can pm people if interested.
I would be interested
I’m interested! Can you PM me? I currently use an IPTV service that’s just okay.
I would like that PM if possible. Just got 3 emails in the last 2 weeks about various services raising their pricing
I would very much like a PM :)
Me ten
I would be very happy about a PM too :-)
Cable sucked for other reasons and I sure wouldn’t have ever really called it cheap. There’s a reason people wanted to get away from it in the first place. I’ve been seeing a lot of pro cable nonsense going around and it would be such a pity if the streaming situation devolved back to putting up with the predatory nature of cable-like services.
I think OP is referring to the original streaming status quo, where Netflix was the only game in town, it cost under 15 bucks a month, and everybody licensed their back catalog to them rather than developing their own competing platforms.
It was illegal for companies to fully vertically integrate by owning production and distribution back then. A corrupt judge struck it down several years ago which put us into this mess. That’s why theaters hadn’t been owned by studios for a long time.
Also why Hulu had all that content: no one owner could run their own service explicitly.
Ahhh, the good old days
That’s exactly what the long game is. Pay for just good enough content in an ad delivery service.
You forgot the part where they try to kill off piracy, because if they charge more then more people pirate, but if they prevent people from pirating then they can charge a whole lot more.
Piracy actually keeps prices down.
There are two main problems with digital piracy. First, it robs the creator of their income. It’s not just big companies who suffer – the people working behind the scenes lose out too.
No, robbery is theft under the threat of violence. Theft requires an intent to deprive the owner of their possession. Copyright infringement is not theft.
Businesses do not have a right to peoples’ money.
Second, piracy is illegal. Penalties for stealing digital content vary from country to country, but they can be quite harsh. In the UK, digital pirates face up to five years in prison and a £5000 GBP fine (~$6000)
Criminal copyright infringement might attract prison time, but that has a fairly high bar, and is typically focused on profiting from piracy. Most copyright infringement is not a crime, but a civil offense - and it’s only because of extensive lobbying by greedy businesses that crimes have been established on the books.
Outside of the US, copyright infringement can only attract actual damages, ie the proveable loss in income. Given that you can’t easily prove that someone would’ve paid for the things they pirate, outside of the US there never really have been big cases of people downloading things being charged and facing significant fines.
What has changed?
The EUIPO speculates that financial pressures, like inflation, means that people have less money to spend on entertainment. This can be seen in the way that fewer people are signing up for Netflix or Amazon Prime – and some are even cancelling their subscriptions altogether.
The EUIPO suggests that rather than stop watching digital content online, these people are now turning to illegal sources to access the TV shows they watch. And that is why piracy rates are on the up.
Of course, it has nothing to do with the quality of these services going down as their prices go up…
It was simple for me, two things:
- My subscription going up with no increase in quality
- Show after show they cancel on cliffhangers after two seasons
Not to mention services like Netflix cracking down on account sharing. I will keep it if I can share it with my parents and they can buy a streaming service and share it with me. But if it’s just for me, it’s not worth spending the money on. I’d rather just pirate the one or two shows I want to watch on Netflix, or sign up for a month, watch something that looks interesting then unsubscribe.
Not even that, I remember 15 years ago universities saying that people had 3 devices on average, yet today Netflix only allows you 2 on their basic package. Now, people almost certainly use more than that. If I can’t move from one device to another conveniently, then what’s the point of paying?
By all means, limit simultaneous access between devices, but locking me to so few is just punitive. Who wants to pay for punishment?
This actually mattered to me too. Plus, my parents were still using and enjoying the recently-cancelled DVD program so that was just another nail in the coffin.
I’m surprised that so few people decide to follow the spirit of the law and, just, boycott media instead.
Im not. Relative poverty nor some moralist rational won’t stop most of us from experiencing culture and media we are interested in.
Or more accurately, experiencing culture and media that social pressure coaxes you into being interested in.
Bread and circuses, and peer pressure means you can’t just settle for the free circus material you can get at the library or even just for free online.
This is what happens when you increase pricing, add advertising on top of increased pricing, remove your content from competitors and create your own additional platform, all while decreasing the quality and amount of content.
Speedrunning the demise of cable tv!
It’s worth noting that although piracy is up, the rates are still far lower than they were 20, 10 or even five years ago. Whether people continue to access content illegally remains to be seen – hopefully this is just a ‘blip’ and rates of theft begin to fall again as the economy recovers.
I can’t be bothered to pull back all the layers of naive optimism in just these two sentences.
Yep. Stop making shit deals and 100 different services to subscribe to and people will go back to paying for things. Gaben is the only smart one.
Until this month I paid more than $100 for multiple streaming services. I finally got pissed off when something I wanted to watch was no longer available. Instead I went and torrented it and canceled 90% of the services. It’s time to go back to self streaming everything.
Welcome back
