• Pat
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      22 years ago

      This isn’t as much of a meme as it’s a commentary on the state of the media industry. Even when my disposable income was great enough for me to subscribe to multiple services, piracy is just so damn easy and convenient that I’d rather pirate everything I want and have it all on my own streaming server (jellyfin) and be able to watch everything in one place, instead of having multiple services with hardly any worthwhile content. Having to scroll through hundreds of movies and shows I have no interest in to find the handful of things worth watching, spread across multiple services and apps, is nothing but a headache. Plus, even if I pay for a subscription, they up their prices on a regular basis.

      This is no meme, this is a statement that the only real way to enjoy media without headaches is piracy. This has always been the case and always will be.

  • @[email protected]
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    42 years ago

    The only “pirating” I do these days is using real debrid and I think that’s the lightest pirating you can do since I since have to pay although an extremely small amount compared to a traditional streaming service.

    • @[email protected]
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      262 years ago

      I’m a really great person. I’m good at everything. My friends are all tools and won’t ever be as amazing as me.

      Congratulations. I bet those friends are absolutely real.

  • @[email protected]
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    302 years ago

    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.

  • 🕸️ Pip 🕷️
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    2362 years ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Especially if you have as much money as this dude claims to have.

      I mean, this is on 4chan. Regardless of whether this is true or not, the post is blatantly narcissistic. I don’t know why it should be here and what’s there to discuss.

    • @[email protected]
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      272 years ago

      Also I’m top 4-5% in my country, but compared to developed countries in not even at top 50% and so many of these digital products are not necessarily priced lower for my region specially the big houses like EA and Ubisoft, so I understand the original comment. And i also agree on the second part that where there is a will there is a way.

      But i remeber donating about 10$ for a small dev that was livestreaming and i had pirated the game because game costed 40$. And I thought 10$ was a decent enough donation to cover my sins. Dev in a couple of days was crying over stream about how donating 10$ is doing nothing and he just would buy a beer (10$ buys about 14 beers in my country) and was just being an ass over the stream.

      I’m not saying all devs are like that, but for a lot of third world country pirating is a lifestyle not because they just want to keep stealing, they just see it as a movement against wealth inequality. I’m not saying it’s right or not, I’m just explaining how the thought process works.

      • 🕸️ Pip 🕷️
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        112 years ago

        I never said it wasn’t, but that was an extreme anecdote first of all, and second, I have re-iterated that this doesn’t apply to people who don’t have such disposable income. Relative to their cost of living, always. Pirating is a lifestyle, stealing from poor creators when you make a substantial amount of money is not. What you sent was enough, more than enough. The dev in question sounds like a jackass and unfortunately he wouldn’t be the first with how many indie and major game devs turn out to be horrible people.

    • Zuberi 👀
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      152 years ago

      Ehh. Tell them to make a game that is actually worth $60 and I’ll consider it.

      Not to mention all of the old games they won’t re-release on purpose because emulators are “stealing.”

      • @[email protected]
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        152 years ago

        Why the downvotes, he’s got a point. Big mega corps that release $70 games while abandoning the old games are the most moral argument you can make for piracy.

        • 🕸️ Pip 🕷️
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          162 years ago

          Is that relevant to my comment? I said support the creators directly, not the corporations and explained with examples. That reply was suspicious and arrogant asf if you ask me. I never said spend 60$ for the game, I said support the creators directly, even through smaller amounts. Even a euro from a person who can is enough. You cracked the game, you liked it, why not do that bare minimum if you legit have that money + a lot more?

          • Zuberi 👀
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            62 years ago

            ?.. Bro you’re the one in the piracy sub spewing anti-piracy rhetoric.

            Consider it a courtesy that the lemmy.world chuds upvote this shit at all.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      I think that funding creators is great if you have the money and the inclination. I just don’t think that it makes you an asshole if you don’t.

      There are creators whom I fund because they give me exclusive extra content on their Patreons or sometimes if I just think that their work is important enough and I want to see it continue. If I decide that I need that money for something else, that’s up to me.

    • @[email protected]
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      362 years ago

      For some people, it’s the convenience with pirating. It’s easier to pirate a movie from a go-to piracy website that you use than to find in which of the 50 different streaming sites the movie is available.

      • Karyoplasma
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        442 years ago

        Gabe Newell agrees with you. He said that piracy is almost always a service problem, not a pricing problem.

        • @[email protected]
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          52 years ago

          Yup, I remember that interview. It was about pirates providing translations for the pirated games, that weren’t included by their creators.

          Fair pricing is also part of that. Like when Netflix first came out, even with its pretty restricted catalogue, it was a good deal at the time.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        I mean, Apple movies, Steam and Spotify or whatever your storefront of choice is will 95% of the time have what you’re looking for. The only tricky medium to find stuff is TV.

    • @[email protected]
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      202 years ago

      this. pirate all you want, netflix/disney/etc. will be fine. but find and support the artist. this is why i’m now stuck with the crap news around bandcamp. there are less and less ways to support creators instead of the leeches every day :(

        • @[email protected]
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          bandcamp was sold to epic games in 2022 and again to songtradr this year, and half its staff got laid off recently. CEO said that it was not profitable enough - though it was already very profitable. So it’s likely to start squeezing every penny out of users and artists in the next few years

        • @[email protected]
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          42 years ago

          There were news of trouble a couple of weeks ago: sold (earlier) twice, layoffs, union problems, uncertainty :(

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        zero value

        Rofl yeah right, like your face didn’t light up the first time you heard the Halo theme.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Absolutely, this guy doesn’t care one bit about anything but the cash and status.

      I pirate as much as the next bloke, but also buy multiple copies of some games because I enjoy them so much, or to get friends to play. I’m looking at you terraria…

      It’s for the same reasons I would rather support a YouTuber I like directly through Patreon etc. than by disabling my adblocker.

    • @[email protected]
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      72 years ago

      I think the point was that despite him being top 5% of earners in his country, he’s still poor and thus still pirates.

      For me it’s always been different, I’ve always pirated from a data archival perspective, which is why I’m also a maintainer/contributor of several open-source data archival projects.

      • Illecors
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        122 years ago

        That is definitely not the point of this post.

    • @[email protected]
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      Depending which country we’re talking about. Top 5% in Malawi is probably still a person who needs to pirate, although I could be wrong about that with 3rd world wealth inequality.

      Edit: Based on the top 10% figure, guesses and napkin math, that’s an income of about 5000USD annually, so yeah pirate away.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        Are you free to learn or consume as necessary for your survival from the society you’re expected to grow to support? No? Then you have a need to pirate.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 years ago

      What if the product already turned a profit? That means everyone has been paid for their work already.

      Any extra revenue is just additional profit. Why would I give them more money for no extra work?

  • cannache
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    312 years ago

    I pirate a lot of stuff too but I prefer to buy stuff too sometimes just to provide support

      • @[email protected]
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        92 years ago

        Even better: buy a ticket to a concert and buy a shirt. Especially for smaller bands, this is where they make money.

    • @[email protected]
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      272 years ago

      I tend to buy stuff I’ve already pirated.

      I have games bought with 0 hours played because I already played them with my pirate hat.

      When you are a pirate you have a different mindset. You get to really choose who do you want to give your money to, and you tend to chose people who really deserve it.

      • Karyoplasma
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        22 years ago

        There are only a few games that I bought without the opportunity to test them before the purchase. And I don’t mean a scuffed demo that only gives you a very shallow impression of how the different game systems interact with each other, I mean actually being able to play the damn game.

        I don’t subscribe to the idea of hype purchasing just to shit on the game after release because it’s inevitably gonna be trash. Last time I made that mistake was with D3, oh boy, was that game a dumpster fire on release. The next thing I’m gonna buy without testing it first will be the Fangs of Asterkarn expansion for Grim Dawn. The devs are awesome, the base game is awesome and the last 2 DLCs were awesome too, so that’s why I don’t need my pirate hat in this instance.

  • Enkrod
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    942 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      That’s what they get for being too stupid to use free streaming services.

      A fool and their money are soon parted.

      It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them they’d been fooled.

    • @[email protected]
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      522 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          82 years ago

          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

      • lad
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        12 years ago

        I wonder if you have legal access to things you’re pirating, could someone call that a theft too? 🤔

      • @[email protected]
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        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          62 years ago

          When you steal books from a library, you’re preventing others from accessing those books. When you download a digital copy of a book, you aren’t.

          Same thing with money. If you stole my money, I’d be upset, but I wouldn’t be upset if I had infinite money.

          • lad
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            142 years ago

            I’m not sure whether to agree or not, but he’s got the point in the following sense: if everyone will pirate and never donate to the creator, then the creator will get about zero returns and will likely go make a living doing something else.

            So pirate + donate looks like more fair redistribution of wealth, while pirate + no pay looks like being greedy asshole same as corporations

          • @[email protected]
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            132 years ago

            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

            • @[email protected]
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              112 years ago

              You make a copy of something of value, you don’t steal it. It’s still there afterwards

              • @[email protected]
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                52 years ago

                Agreed 100%. Original argument about taking something of value, if somone takes the source code, rebrands the original and re-releases the content for money, that would be stealing.

                What are these people called? Not pirates for sure, Oh right they’re called some big “media creator company”

            • @[email protected]
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              42 years ago

              It’s actually quite simple. If I steal your car, I have your car and you don’t. If I clone your car, you still have your car. Theft leaves you poorer, copying doesn’t.

              Now, there is a valid cargument about me having some benefit from some vehicle designers’ IP without having paid for it, but it is not necessarily true that if I couldn’t clone it I would definitely have bought it. So the clone cannot be considered a proven lost sale.

              The law actually supports this. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for piracy under the laws of theft (except back in the day when piracy actually was theft, shiver me timbers and all that sort of stuff). It’s always copyright violation, and in sensible countries the prosecution have to prove there has been substantial material loss to the IP owner, which in the case of single copies for personal use is virtually impossible (especially where we all have to pay a blank media tax which compensates copyright owners for copies that might be made, even where those media are not used for copying someone else’s IP, which is scandalous, but here we are), but where someone has cloned stuff and gone on to either sell copies of ther clones that’s a lot easier.

              • @[email protected]
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                32 years ago

                I’ll never lose sleep over it and don’t care for the whales but I do directly donate $15 a month, sometimes individually but often times to 2 or 3 individuals. The only service I pay for otherwise is realdebrid. I started donating as I got to a comfortable place in life and am happy to contribute that subscription plus my $15 a month donation to the project, creator, artist w/e. I pick based on the content our household is consuming or projects I want to support.

                At the end of the day I don’t think anyone needs to justify anything. Even if pirating is considered to be immoral, which I’m not arguing, it would still be the least immoral practice in the process compared to all the shit that takes place with large commercially developed content.

                If things ever got stupid I’d just play crossword and do puzzles, I’m not so attached to electronic media that I’d pay over $50 a month for the entertainment.

  • @[email protected]
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    542 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      72 years ago

      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

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          The more the merrier!

          Personally, if I’m interested in quality I think downloading is the way to go.

          Streaming is great for its accessibility.

    • @[email protected]
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      82 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        72 years ago

        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.

        • quirzle
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          62 years ago

          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.

  • @[email protected]
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    302 years ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      82 years ago

      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

          • @[email protected]
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            72 years ago

            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 😅

  • @[email protected]
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    22 years ago

    I used to pirate movies but ever since torrent sites stopped working or started giving you .exe files, I stopped watching movies completely. Unless it’s a movie on TV ofc.

  • @[email protected]
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    322 years ago

    What a twat. Imagine your personality being you don’t support creatives because you are addicted to stealing.

    • @[email protected]
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      262 years ago

      I support creatives with direct donations. When you buy Netflix, you’re supporting extraordinarily wealthy capitalists.

      If you actually care about supporting creatives, end all your subscriptions, pirate all your media, and give 100% of your previous subscription costs directly to the creatives you want to support.

    • @[email protected]
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      192 years ago

      How many times do we have to write this exact line? “Piracy is not stealing, as the original remains in the hands of the owner. Piracy is simply making a copy and distributing it.”

      It’'s not a morally correct act to be sure, however we really need to come up with a better terminology.

      I do agree with your assessment of this particular twat though.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        You have to keep saying it because it’s not true. I’ve known artists who have seen their work stolen. Until then I never truly understood the hurt it causes them. I watched a normally jovial friend spiral into anger and depression. Sure, pirating some garbage Marvel movie isn’t going to impact much. But you take that same mindset and scale it down, and now you are hurting real people.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          See that’s just the thing, I pay for media that’s worthwhile, especially from the smaller folks out there. Marvel, disney, Blizzard etc. Can suck my left nut, their shit isnt worth the pixels they render it on.

    • @[email protected]
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      232 years ago

      IIRC paying for streaming services rarely supports creatives beyond a fraction of a cent per play tho