Asklemmy

Personally, I've been boycotting plenty of things during the years because of the crusade against piracy. If Big Media is spending so much effort into ensuring that people that can't pay don't have access to their works, then fine, I'll boycott those works just to prove their actual point - that what they want is to earn more money, not to have their artwork locked in a box due to lack of buyers.

Media in English language are either inaccessible or overpriced while translations vary in quality. I'm also a little fan of how individuals in seed-peer networks keep content alive just for the sake of it. I don't see how piracy hurts artists as much as it's said to.

i mainly pirate games because it usually works way better. like i own gta v and with pirated copy the game starts as soon as you click on the exe. with steam version, it takes like 1-2 minutes to connect to servers and shit. also like some aaa games are really expensive for my income even after regional pricing.

i have never bought a subscription for a streaming service or paid for any movie/tv show/music. why do it when you can pirate it and dont have to look for which streaming service its on and pay for it.

as for 'you claim to hate capitalism, yet you want to take advantage of its treats' is such a dog shit argument. Do I see capitalists in the C Suite making video games or movies? No its the fucking actors, vfx graphics, programmers etc. did anti-monarchists during feudal times not eat food because it was produced under a feudal system? the argument can be flipped just as easily, if you love capitalism so much why do purchase games made by workers?

I pirate content that is not in print within my region. Fan subs of Japanese TV shows, emulated games for discontinued consoles, things like that.

If unemployed: Pirate EVERYTHING.

If employed: Pirate EVERYTHING (excluding: indie games)

My friend only pirates 80€ games to try them out before buying.

I just pirate everything because it's easier.

I still buy physical media every now and then as gifts or to collect, but generally it just doesn't make sense to pay for data that can be freely and easily copied. I need that money for things that aren't freely and easily copied.

Well, my friend, he's kinda poor he can't afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates.

Good on your friend. Poor or not, you should too.

Do you pirate?

Yes

And do you justify pirating? i.e., what is your piracy philosophy?

Justify it ? you seem to suggest it's wrong or something

If I have legally purchased content or an application, and that content or application is no longer available for some reason, then I feel justified pirating.

A game that requires an online connection but the company took down the servers and won't release the code for example.

There is no legitimate way for me to use the thing I already bought.

Other than that, I'm just too lazy to do it any more.

When I was young and poor, there was various software I did pirate, but now days there is nothing I need that the company won't pay for.

I believe all information should be free. Be it of cultural or academic importance no one deserves to be left out because capitalism screwed them. If the system cannot adequately compensate the people that make they should change the system or stop making the thing. I make my pirating decisions with that in mind. The vast majority of movies and tv I would rather not exist than exist only for the rich so I pirate it.

I pirate when getting a copy of something is otherwise too inconvenient and/or ridiculously overpriced and I REALLY need to watch it. I used to pirate basically everything. Nowadays very often I will wait for and then rent a movie on iTunes because that is the most convenient way and the price is fine. My FOMO is not as strong anymore. I also rarely watch any series that is not on a streaming service.

Not much thought goes into it. I've never bought a copy of windows in twenty years of using it because they don't need the money. I buy small pieces of specialist software from small and independent developers. I've got a streaming video service but if it doesn't have the thing I want to watch I find it online.

Yes, I pirate. But I don't justify it. 🤷‍♂️

I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can't get something through my library. I don't watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it

Ebooks often cost more than paper books, they're also easily pirate-able, mainly due to their small size, so my Kindle has almost... 600MB of wArEz

Pirated games some long time ago, if I liked it I bought it, it's a nice way to test how a game runs on my machine, there were almost no demos a few years ago, now more and more games have them, also you can test some of them with subscriptions like gamepass

Also streaming subscriptions are too fragmented, that IMO justices occasional piracy

I am disabled and earn pennies every month. I'll glady support something I like (I buy a shitton of CDs), but I won't lose any sleep from pirating a movie I wasn't gonna buy or see in the theatres anyway.

I do not pirate. I occasionally like to go out to sea, but I feel like spending long stretches of time out there would suck. I'd get sunburnt, I would eat like shit, my ship would probably not have decent internet access... like, there are so many cons, and I probably would make less money doing that than I am as an attorney. Not a great career path.

I do download movies I want to watch if I can't find them streaming. But I don't do anything that I'd call "piracy."

Across everyone in the house, we have Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney/ESPN. Sailing the high seas means all the shows and movies available from those servicea can be accessed via one media server interface.

Every once in a while I log into Amazon Video to see if their interface is as hot trash as I remember. It always is.

Your friend sounds cool

I live outside the US market. As a rule I'll pay for whatever content is legally available in my country (netflix, disney+, steam etc) however there are certain publishers and/or content which is simply not offered through any channel. At that point they aren't going to see $ from me in any case, so I may as well pirate.

Something fun I listened to today about tpb and free access to information/cultural peices of art. Kinda.. https://youtu.be/eFQFW5JgUjE?si=50BXG19ey8pVEYfv

I just don't earn enough money to justify paying for movies, games and books, i can use those money to pay my bills and what little left after paying my bills, i save it for future

It's the ease of use for me. Arrs + usenet + plex is an unbeatable combo.

Yes, I pirate, and I pirate alot. Games, books, shows, software, I do it all. But I also buy stuff, mainly games, occasionally books. I'm am not in a position where I have the sort of money to buy everything I want.

My piracy philosophy is mainly to almost always pirate it first. If I like the game enough, I'll buy the game when I have the money. I have done this alot, A Hat in Time, Hollow Knight, and recently Baldurs Gate 3.

With books it's alot more difficult, as they tend to be alot more expensive than games, especially for the series I read. (Manga and Light Novels). As there will fairly often be around 30$ per volume where I live, and close to 12 volumes total. And that's if you can even buy them in the country, or if they have even been translated officially, which if they haven't, then piracy is your only choice to read it.

Regarding shows, I basically only watch Anime, and the only way to really stream Anime is crunchyroll, which region locks alot of the shows, gives hardly any money back to the actual creators of the shows, then uses the money they get to make awful shows. Pirating anime is realistically the only way to enjoy it hassle free.

For software, everything is license based now, I'm willing to do one off purchases at a reasonable price (something like steam wallpaper engine), but I hate recurring fees. I pirate software like photoshop.

Ultimately piracy isn't really as bad as people tend to think it is, it's largely just people enjoying the stuff that they would never have been able to pay to enjoy anyway. It's especially good for people with less disposable income in helping them find where they can spend the money on things they enjoy, such as with me with the games I mentioned earlier.

Just big companies and because they will screw people over for a profit.

I want to start pirating and I want a forever solution to media management. Photos, music, movies/television, audiobooks/podcasts, even construction literature I use for work. I don't know where to begin however. I'm just thinking I'll need to spend an incredible amount of money if I ever want to continue any subscription model.

I'll pirate anything I have owned but for various reasons I now can only license so all my old games I bought I'll have ROMs of as well as albums whose labels no longer exist or are not in circulation such as obscure Punk tracks.

For me it's usually about availability. If someone suggests I try out a cool game that came out in the 80s, there's a pretty good chance piracy is the only way to play it. Sure, you can pay way too much on Ebay to get a physical copy, and I have a fair collection of retro games, but it's not like the money from Ebay sales go back to the original creators.

Same with movies. The version of Star Wars I grew up with, the one without all the digitally added stuff since the late 90s, isn't on Disney+. If Disney announced a nice blu-ray Star Wars collection that featured the copies without Jedi Rocks and the extra aliens in the cantina and whatever, I'd go out and get it. But they haven't, so I stick to the fan-made 'despecialized editions'.

I don't pirate from the little guy. I buy albums on Bandcamp and indie games on Steam all the time. I want the small creators to be able to eat. But I'm also fortunate enough to have a little disposable income. I know some people pirate as much as they can, and while I don't entirely agree with it, I don't know their financial situation (or the availability of these things in their country), so it's not really my place to judge them.