• @[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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    512 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      732 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        132 years ago

        Don’t have kids then. Much more free time.

        I don’t understand

        1. Making the deliberate choice of having kids
        2. Complaining about missing out on other things because of said kids
        • @[email protected]
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          82 years ago

          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.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 years ago

          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.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          There is stuff worth pirating, stuff which can’t be found through other means or is way overpriced. Stuff like old movies or impossible to legally gather roms.

          For all others: “convenience is king.”

          And you’re smart to not pirate software. The. “no illegal software” rule has saved me many times.

      • @[email protected]
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        132 years ago

        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

  • @[email protected]
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    132 years ago

    I think for movies and music this is totally true. Video games less so but not impossible

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      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

    • @[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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        2 years ago

        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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    92 years ago

    The RIAA drove me to piracy in the early days.

    Then stuff like Google Play music came along and I stopped because I can actually pay for basically any song I want to listen to, all at my fingertips and that is still true. It makes me happy to support the artists and their music though I know they don’t get very much of the cut.

    The MPAA was much of the same story.

    Then Netflix happened and I was all set for the same thing to happen, but it didn’t. Now streaming is almost as fractured as cable TV packages, and I went right back to piracy.

    Screw it. I don’t feel bad about it because they haven’t shown any regard for the people they continually exploit, namely their customers. They don’t give any shits if I financially sink while trying to afford to enjoy the things that they make, so I won’t give any shits about their financial situation while I enjoy it anyways. Fuck them.

    • @[email protected]
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      322 years ago

      Money is not the issue to me. I’ll happily pay for every episode I watch, maybe even per download. I just don’t want my content scattered across different platforms in suboptimal quality and be forced to pay a fixed fee even if I just need the one show on that platform.

      It’s a service issue.

      • @[email protected]
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        122 years ago

        I just don’t want my content scattered across different platforms in suboptimal quality and be forced to pay

        That and also the fact that sometimes content vanishes from those platforms because of licensing agreements and/or get censored like many older TV Shows have gotten.

        • lad
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          32 years ago

          Oh, yes, so true. Like when a game is no longer up for buying because one of the music tracks in the OST had it’s license rot, perfect customer service

      • @[email protected]
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        182 years ago

        If media/publishing companies would just throw the exclusivity model in the trash where it belongs (and let DRM die too), then everyone could pay to see what they want on their platform of choice without this bullshit. As long as that’s not the case, I don’t see myself using these “services”.

    • @[email protected]
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      82 years ago

      How so?

      I have 32tb, bit overkill 8 tb HDD ~$180 X4= $720

      Netflix (no ads) 22.99 22.99/720=31.3

      As long as you use it for 3 or so years, it pays for itself. The only difference is you have both the hardware and the movies forever.

      • @[email protected]
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        42 years ago

        AND you have access to NEARLY EVERYTHING, with the right trackers…. vs one sub to n-flix getting you 2% of shows. My server has Simpsons S01-s13 randomizer, KotH randomizer, and Futurama randomizers… can’t get that on Netflix!

    • @[email protected]
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      72 years ago

      Not really over a 5 year period, especially if you talk about more than a single subscription service. If you mean by preserve as keeping a full 3-2-1 backup, then yeah sure, but most people don’t need that. Double backup the truly important/rare content, everything else can be redownloaded in case of tragedy.

      For posterity, 1 year of HBO Max or Disney+ is $150. Over 5 years that’s $750. If you are someone who knows you annually rewatch content, then that’s likely a guaranteed expense. Btw, if you pay month to month unless it’s less than 8 months of the year, monthly is more expensive, so I’m being generous here. No managing monthly subscriptions is also a major benefit.

      That price nets you at least six 8TB HDD’s at $109 each, which 48TB is far more storage than most people would ever need so some of that cost can go to a power efficient Optiplex and some to spare for a VPN leaving you with at least 32TB.

      As mentioned, each additional streaming service is going to exponentially increase that cost, further justifying your investment, and the peace of mind that whatever service hasn’t removed it.

      Technically you use your time to pay for “setting up and maintaining it” but… That’s some BS honestly. Plex/Jellyfin are set up once and forget about them. Us nerds put in time to curate and go the extra mile, but most people can very easily have a simple low power server running. If they can set up the *arrs (not really very hard) then good automation for them, if not manually searching for what you want as you want it is one more step than a subscription. More steps if you need to sign up for the first time ;)

      Granted - a streaming service doesn’t charge you $325 for the initial server+storage, however streaming services also don’t give you a lot of things for 2.10 years of streaming so I’d say it’s worth the investment. And it definitely does not cost more to preserve your media if you subscribe to more than 1 service. If you subscribe to only one and cancel monthly and spend your time managing that then maybe. (but if you don’t need 4k and consume that little content, you may still be better off with a Pi-like and a hard drive…)

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      It depends very much how and why you pirate. I guess for many it is a hobby, they are data horders, etc. If you only stream pirated media online and use free cracked software like I mostly do, it is also totally free to pirate. But it costs you another resource then: time! So yes, piracy has a cost, the effort you have to put into it. It’s the same like trying to avoid the big five. Installing a custom os on your phone, blocking ads and intrusive trackers, selfhosting stuff etc all takes a lot of time and effort. So most people just pay for this stuff with their money or with their data out of convenience. When it gets too pricey, then they start finding alternatives. I would argue that we shouldn’t let convenience deter us from trying to be independent and having our sovereignty over our personal data respected.

  • @[email protected]
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    2762 years ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      332 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        192 years ago

        My exception is smaller bands with bamdcamp.

        Buying from there supports the artists well!

        • @[email protected]
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          62 years ago

          I basically do the same. I buy a majority of albums as records from my favorite bands or just bands I want to support.

    • Colonel Sanders
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      192 years ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        232 years ago

        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.

  • sebinspace
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    132 years ago

    I don’t pirate games because Steam just makes it more convenient, and sites like IsThereAnyDeal make it easy to find sales.

    However, as someone that’s been a hobbyist developer for 15 years, and never really been able to overcome the imposter syndrome to be able to publish anything, I’d be happy if someone thought my game was even worth the time to pirate, much less be paid for.

    • 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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    12 years ago

    Anyone know what happened to the rarbgdotbest? It was a mirror for taken down rarbg, are there any others? I’ve tried rolling my own with docker but can’t get it to work :/

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      Rarbg unfortunately got closed down. Torrentgalaxy is somewhat similar. Also 1337x is a fine alternative

      • Corroded
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        12 years ago

        For media 1337x is great. For video games though there was the the controversy of the admins allowing a Bitcoin miner in a BG3 torrent 3 months ago.

        Mostly irrelevant to what you were saying but still good to know for new comers who don’t know different sources can be good for different things.

  • @[email protected]
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    212 years ago

    There’re a couple of huge downsides (for me personally) to streaming services that just grinds with me:

    • the quality is always worse than physical media, and
    • scrobbing (moving back and forwards in the video, with the arrow keys or by moving the playback head) is almost never instantaneous, it usually requires a couple of seconds while the video rebuffers

    Perhaps physical media is better these days (than DVDs were) for scrobbing, but then you have the FBI piracy messages to deal with. I’ve never owned a BluRay player, perhaps they’re better?

    But I know that sailing the high seas gets me a high-quality video, and I can jump backwards ~5 seconds instantaneously when I’ve not heard a bit a of dialogue.