• @[email protected]
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    1001 year ago

    We only started pirating after Amazon refused to let us play movies we paid for because our hardware was too old for their DRM. It was a 2014 PC made of recycled parts. At the time, it was less than 10 years old. We pirated the same movie and realized it was easier to find, higher quality, and surprise, surprise, capable of playing on a PC we kept out of the landfill.

    When I see anti piracy measures that punish people that don’t pirate, such as massive performance hits or privacy violating features, it makes me want to pirate more.

    • Krudler
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      1 year ago

      720 streams run from strange websites in timbucktoo have higher fidelity than the 4K stream I paid good money for.

      Here’s a great price and you can share it with your friends. Wait not those friends. Wait your phone isn’t authorized anymore. Okay you authorized your phone but you need to authorize it again. Okay we just doubled the price and cut the quality again. Now you can’t watch the movies that you downloaded for offline viewing without an internet connection. Now your ad-free service has ads.

      Netflix can take a long hard suck on my pudding factory, they’re never going to see another penny of my money again, and this is from somebody that goes back to the DVD days of Netflix.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      I rented a car to do Uber with while I apply for jobs, and the car is an electric. They had no gas powered cars available.

      It is such a pain in the ass. I’ve only had it for a couple of days, but so far I’ve spent 2.5 hours today waiting for charge, and about 5 hours driving passengers.

      I’m ready. I want to download a car. Just need someone to point me in the right direction.

    • haui
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      211 year ago

      Trolls ripped me a new one for saying that. I hope they wont do the same to you. But yes I agree.

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night. It’s definitely stealing. This is a piracy community. Don’t feign moral superiority. They offer a product, you don’t want to buy the product so you find it for free elsewhere. A digital file that you experience for a cost is no different than a book you buy from a store, regardless of the state of ownership after the fact. And regardless if it’s a locally published author or a multi billion dollar studio, there’s a cost of entry. Semantics is all you’re arguing, not the legitimacy of piracy, when you share that copypasta.

      • @[email protected]
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        181 year ago

        It’s not stealing unless you delete the original when you download it. It’s forgery at best

      • @[email protected]
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        561 year ago

        “Theft” has a legal definition that at least in my jurisdiction is not met by downloading copyrighted materials. So, no, copying is not stealing.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          Actually, even if you are an EU citizen, downloading copywritten material for free is very much considered theft. Ever read those FBI or Interpol statements at the beginning of films?

          • @[email protected]
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            231 year ago

            It’s legally called “Copyright Infrigement” and it’s not even part of Criminal Law in most Legal Jurisdictions, unlike Theft.

            You’re talking off your arse so hard that by now you must hovering on your own farts.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year ago

            You are wrong. You are talking about copyright infringement, which is a civil matter and not a criminal one. That means the party whose rights have been infringed must prove that and sue you. But you won’t go to jail if convicted, you’ll have to pay damages. That’s why the Netherlands, for example, used to be safe for torrenting. It wasn’t legal, but copyright holders did not have the right to get account details from providers for IP addresses that were caught sharing content (sharing, not downloading) and thus had no one to sue. If it were a criminal matter, the state would be after you and they have a lot more rights.

      • I Cast Fist
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        361 year ago

        In this case, the phrase’s become more popular because people buy digital goods and, due to business shenanigans, they lose access to it, like buying a digital copy of a movie, “owning it”, then no longer being able to access it because Sony couldn’t be arsed to get the rights sorted out.

        There’s also the numerous situations where you can’t legally own media, simply because it’s not up for sale, like the vast majority of content on streaming sites. There’s no way to own and consume some media except through the provider. It’s still illegal, it’s still an unauthorized copy, but in this case, it’s the only way to “own” something.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          Despite crappy licensing agreements and the tenuous relationship between consumers and ownership of a thing, finding a way to circumvent paying for a thing that is for sale in one form or another, is theft.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year ago

            By that definition making coffee at home and taking it with you to work instead of buying is theft.

            Even further anytime you make a product or do a service yourself or get a free alternative (for example, open source software instead of a close-source alternative) instead of buying would be theft by that definition.

            That’s not the legal definition of “theft”, it’s not even the historical or common sense definition of “theft”, it’s some kind of neo-Capitalist Dystopia definition of “theft” that only makes sense if you’re starting from a foundation of there being a “right to make money”.

            • Jojo
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              81 year ago

              How dare you cook dinner for yourself when McDonald’s is right there? How will the franchise owners or the brand owners be able to buy meals for their children!?

          • @[email protected]
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            121 year ago

            Look man, I get that piracy isnt an ethically clean solution, but the current state of legal digital media is nowhere near ethically clean either, and I’m far more likely to root for a person than I am for a corporation. Especially since its because of corporations that the digital ownership sphere is so fucked

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        I will gladly take a position of moral superiority, because copyright has evolved from a very limited monopoly, intended to encourage creativity while balancing public access, into a licence for corporations to seek rent.

        So, call it stealing if you like, I will sleep well tonight regardless.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          You’re taking a thing that costs money, for free. I don’t see how it’s anything other than stealing.

          If you go to a theme park, and they want $20 for you to enter, and you decide you don’t want to pay, you’ll be in violation of their rules. Those that did pay will leave the park at the end of the day with a great experience, but with no presumption of ownership of the park. This is analogous to piracy by copying a movie. You didn’t want to pay the entrance fee, so you found a way to have the same enjoyment for free. The people that paid for their media, however shitty the licensing agreement is, received the agreed upon service with no presumption of ownership.

          I’m not here to defend streaming services or crappy licensing deals, but to pretend that it’s not stealing, gaslighting everyone here into following your train of thought, is the definition of unearned moral superiority. You’re not entitled to free media.

          • @[email protected]
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            211 year ago

            The only theft going on is the ongoing theft from the public domain, due to corruption of copyright law by special interests enabled by law for hire. Your analogy is irrelevant as the marginal cost of operating a park for an extra visitor is not zero.

          • @[email protected]
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            181 year ago

            It’s like refusing to pay the $20 park entrance fee and then making your own copy of the park in your backyard. Is that stealing $20 from the park?

            • Jojo
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              21 year ago

              I mean it’s still possibly copyright and/or trademark infringement, but…

          • @[email protected]
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            181 year ago

            He didn’t take the movie/music from them. They still have it. It still exists on their tape/film/drive. If you are going to argue, at least argue in good faith, with words that mean what you are trying to say.

    • @[email protected]
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      861 year ago

      I can’t find it now, but there was that one text post that went something like “1. Copying a movie costs the studio money, 2. Download a movie, 3. Make 1000 copies, 4. Studio goes bankrupt”

      • @[email protected]
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        461 year ago

        I saw one where it went:

        • Publish a copyrighted work
        • Sell it for 10 bucks
        • Have a friend pirate it 100 million times
        • Declare bankruptcy
        • Have the friend delete his copies
        • You’re a billionaire now
  • @[email protected]
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    981 year ago

    I love it when corpos remind us that there is an alternative to purchasing their add bloated products.

  • Night Monkey
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    241 year ago

    I’ve always said, if you can’t sell me something based on interest and quality entertainment, then I’m pirating it, because I never would have bought it anyways.

  • @[email protected]
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    421 year ago

    The conclusion doesn’t follow the study.

    Threatening messages decrease piracy by women by over 50%, while increasing piracy by men by 18%.

    So, unless there are three times as many male pirates as female, those messages are effective at reducing piracy.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 year ago

      So, unless there are three times as many male pirates as female, those messages are effective at reducing piracy.

      That would not surprise me at all.

    • D61 [any]
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      1 year ago

      Don’t have time to read the research paper linked by the article at the moment…

      But isn’t the research just looking at how people view the message and not “were you pirating stuff and now you’re not?”

        • amzd
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          211 year ago

          Because of the technical skill required for pirating and the tech industry being mostly men currently.

          • @[email protected]
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            61 year ago

            My wife set up an ARR stack, because she didn’t like downloading individual episodes. It’s not that hard.

            • @[email protected]
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              151 year ago

              The point is that your wife is in the minority. The vast majority of people wouldn’t consider torrenting, let alone *arrs. People with a greater willingness to tinker and learn technical stuff are the ones who’ll consider it, and that group is overwhelmingly composed of men as of right now.

        • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
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          1 year ago

          Result of gender stereotypes affecting the behaviour of female and male children, so male children grow up to be more encouraged to learn about technology and engage in risk taking behaviour.

          Also inclination to risk taking behaviour is much higher in biological men than biological women, which would also give a potential reason why this advertisment works on women but not on men.

          As always these attributions only represent the average of the women and men populations as a whole. Ofc. there is risk averse men and tech savvy women.

          • Jojo
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            21 year ago

            The word cis or cisgender is right there my friend. Trans people are still biological, after all.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    I’m suspicious of the idea that women respond favorably to those notices.

    “You wouldn’t download a car…”
    Women: Gee, officer, that’s a good point.

    Riiiiiiight…

    • @[email protected]
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      141 year ago

      Yeah, proper cohort attribution seems to be a little lacking by this data analyst. I’d say gender bias has already occured before your specific sample point… bro

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      They work on my mother, but she has the kind of faith in the system I honestly envy. It seems like a much more tranquil existence.

      This is the same woman who thinks the Judge Rotenburg center must not be that bad, because otherwise it would have already been closed down. She just…can’t imagine a regulatory failure that big actually happening.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      According to the article, these were threatening messages (one about potential viruses, another about legal penalties). It fits gender stereotypes perfectly for women to seek to mitigate risks while seek someone to hold their beer.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        So the result of the study is “it’s pretty easy to scare women into submission”? Sounds like a great use of their time and resources. 🤮

    • @[email protected]
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      101 year ago

      Lol piracy intentions :P

      now we need a follow up study comparing gender differences between who gets caught more.

  • @[email protected]
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    541 year ago

    “oh, right. If I had just pirated this my content wouldn’t be delayed by these stupid piracy warnings.”

    • olbaidiablo
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      161 year ago

      Sony lost any moral high ground when they put a commercial for a Toyota on my Blu-ray of 1408 which retailed for $35 at the time. And of course, you can’t skip it.

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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        71 year ago

        That reminded me about those long, unskippable previews on DVDs… extremely annoying. VLC at least could skip straight to the disc menu though, pretty much ditched Windows Media Player and PowerDVD after that.

        Now here I am on the high seas, with all my media consumption devices running some flavor of Linux. Have not had a single annoyance since.

        • olbaidiablo
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          21 year ago

          I’ve been sailing the high seas since BBS’s reigned supreme. Btw, there are telnet BBS’s.

  • @[email protected]
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    131 year ago

    well yeah you simply cannot convince me that copying a sequence of 1s and 0s between two computers is tantamount to stealing

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      Yeah, it’s silly. It’s an entire industry built on “frivolous”, optional consumption. They are making a killing even WITH piracy. They (the studios, etc.) make so much money that they can afford to selectively offer their product only to certain streaming services, region locked, and some of them have even paid to develop their own streaming platforms just for fun.

      All they have to do is put their product on the real market, let any platform stream it for a licensing fee, and offer things that people actually want to buy: physical media and silly trinkets.

      They’re trying to squeeze blood from a stone. If they were struggling, they’d just let me buy their product for a reasonable fee instead of making me jump through hoops and watch commercials.

  • badbrainstorm
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    741 year ago

    I remember the commercials “Piracy is not a victimless crime” pissed me off so hard, and drove me to download much more than I otherwise would have

  • Doctor xNo
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    151 year ago

    I actually spent time on ripping the ‘you wouldn’t steal…’ video from the first DVD that I had with it on it, just for the sheer irony. 😅

  • @[email protected]
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    Ai summary because it seems like folks aren’t reading the article:

    The study finds that threatening anti-piracy messages aimed at deterring digital piracy have the opposite effect on men, finding they increase piracy behaviors by 18% in men. However, such messages can reduce intended piracy in women by over 50%. The research also showed educational messages had no impact on intended piracy for both men and women. Notably, those with more favorable views of piracy saw even higher increases in intended piracy when exposed to threatening messages. The findings suggest anti-piracy groups should tailor their messages for different genders and consider alternative educational approaches to avoid unintended consequences like increasing piracy.

    Seems like threatening messages specifically drive piracy up in men, but not for women. If you have a favorable view on piracy then the aggressive ads make it more likely that you’ll follow through.

    It’s pretty much saying that the industry may want to reconsider the way they frame their warnings because it may actually be influencing people to take action.

  • @[email protected]
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    1061 year ago

    i remember when valve’s steam completely killed nearly all video game piracy just by existing

    • @[email protected]
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      551 year ago

      To the point where a lot of gamers have paid for more games than they’d ever have time to play.

      • @[email protected]
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        201 year ago

        Hey… I only have 600 Steam Games and i don’t remember half of them… But don’t worry, I will play them, after Dragons Dogma 2 and the Elden Ring DLC of course.

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          After I’m finished doing the same shit over and over again for another 7-800 hours in warframe I’m sure I’ll get around to playing some of the games I actually paid money for.

    • @[email protected]
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      781 year ago

      There was a golden age of Netflix where I basically stopped pirating movies and TV too.

      Now streaming is a fragmented ad-ridden nightmare and I pirate more than ever before. It’s not like it’s free either, I pay for a VPN, disk storage, let alone the time and maintenance.

      If I could buy (and actually own) high quality digital copies of movies/tv with no bullshit at a reasonable price that would be a serious value proposition that would beat out the hassles that come along with piracy.

      • @[email protected]
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        221 year ago

        Fully agree. Why is renting a movie the same cost as a month of some random subscription service? Then you also get a copy you can only watch for like 24 hours. If you “buy” you still dont get access to the file, just some digital copy that can be taken away at any point.

        • Jojo
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          1 year ago

          I mean I always knew digital renting was kind of a lame idea, but I didn’t put together how monumentally bad it is until you said that…

        • @[email protected]
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          I don’t think Steam’s business model works well for Movies/TV. Besides delivering the game files after your initial purchase Steam also continues to host and deliver update files for games over time, as well as lots of extras like syncing game saves, the workshop for mods, etc. I like having a centralized service that offers these features and acts a launcher for games because it’s very convenient. These features are a huge value add that makes the service very attractive over piracy.

          But for Movies/TV the main thing I want is the ability to watch the content, at a high quality, on whatever device I want, whenever I want to watch it. Theoretically this shouldn’t be to hard, but with the way all the rights work it’s effectively impossible for any streaming service to offer this. Content gets removed all the time, it’s spread across a ton of different services that all offer a different experience. In a vain attempt to thwart pirates it’s a pain in the ass to watch content offline so it’s unreliable at best.

          The only way to get the experience I want with Movies/TV is to pirate the content.

    • Bigfoot
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      271 year ago

      This is the truth man, I will even buy games on Steam that I’ve pirated in the past with no intention of playing them again. We all largely stopped pirating movies and TV for almost a decade when the streaming experience was superior.

      If there was a steam like service for movies and tv and music that worked on all my platforms I would pay for it just like I paid for a home server running the *arrs.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      And Spotify pretty much killed music piracy . Although you could argue they just changed who did the robbing

      • XiELEd
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        11 year ago

        I think people still pirate music by downloading them off of youtube