Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Earliest example of me pirating was when my dad used Limewire. I'd like to think I used it as well, but I doubt it since I wouldn't have known anything to look up.

Otherwise, in highschool I would go to different sites to find cartoons/anime that weren't available on Netflix (or Hulu back when it was just about the only competitor). This was before I knew what sites were safe, so I probably ended up getting viruses without knowing.

I first wanted a copy of miitopia. But didn't know atbrhe time. Then I just got some nodded apks and game roms

I really wanted to give Assassin's Creed Valhalla a try soon after it came out, as it had been a few years since I'd played any of the games. So I began looking into how I could get it for free.

I didn't really enjoy the game but what I discovered was much greater than just one game.

During my early years of life, my late father used to pirate a lot of movies. And my brother went to same path as my late father. Saved a lot of time and money.

Young and didn't have any money. Certainly not enough to blow on movies or shows. Since then it's been a jumping off point into learning more and more about computers. Networks, data transfer, Linux, virtual machines. I'm looking to get some certifications and get into IT now, and I probably wouldn't have the knowledge to do so if I hadn't spent my years on the high seas.

Back then: The prices of shit and ease of procurement. Nowadays, I’ll buy reasonably priced software because I’m not a broke dick and like to have support if needed. Though, understandably, there’s still a lot of bullshit software that’s way too expensive. But I lean towards foss software when I can get away with it.

But for streaming/cable/satellite? I’d rather wipe my ass with that money. I’ll go to the theater if a movie looks good enough, just to change things up, but with so much awful shit being produced… nope.

I pay for music streaming on Deezer, but also have a carefully curated media library and run Nicotine 24/7 to share on slsk.

I guess it’s a toss up between money and principle. 🤷‍♂️

I'm very fond of DC Talk's So Long My Friend.

To answer your question, it was probably music that sent me sailing the high seas. The only way to get music back then was to tape songs off the radio, download them online or buy a bootleg CD off the street.

Otherwise you'd have a spend a tonne at the few music shops we have/had.

DLCs.

Geographic restrictions. I live in Czechia. I can afford to pay for content and generally do if I can, but there is quite a lot of content I want that is not available via any content service whatsoever here. For that I sail the high seas.

Just born to break the rules.

Exclusive sports deals, geo-blocking, and the general greed of streaming companies that just keep increasing their prices while you don't actually own anything.

When my mom's old laptop became mine in around 2011 it wasn't even powerful enough to run Minecraft at more than 13 FPS, so I sure as shit wasn't gonna spend the occasional money I got on a steam card at 7/11 to load up an account I couldn't even use to play the games well with

I think every game I've ever pirated from childhood and actually liked enough to finish has been paid for now though

Overpriced, privacy-invasive streaming services that require shitty proprietary software to use them

Back in the day, sometimes USA TV shows would not air overseas for months depending on the schedule. Often spoilers online would ruin some parts. Piracy solved this. Then they started doing same time release worldwide but you had to use buggy streaming services and the quality was poor. Then they tried selling shows for much more than their worth on a per episode basis. Piracy fixed all these problems. Netflix was a good, reasonable solution and then they all decided to dontheor own thing. Piracy it is then.

Its funny that even Netflix knew that the greed of others was their biggest risk as they planned to be streaming HBO before HBO and others caught up. Its a pity they didn't emulate the quality.

I wanted to watch Game of Thrones, but I couldn't, because there was no legal streaming service available back then. (This was in 2015 or something).

That's when I discovered the Pirate Bay and its wonders..

Gronk found fire. Gronk thought good idea. Gronk shared idea. Fire never belonged to Gronk. Idea never belonged to Gronk.

Emulation when I was younger (and to a lesser extent now. I own the vast majority of old consoles/games I have any interest in playing these days). These days it's near exclusively TV/Movies and pretty much entirely because of convenience. Between myself and the others in my household, we have near every streaming service, I just can't be fucked to figure out which one what I want to watch is on.

I really need to get around to turning my old pc into a media server.

When i first started as a kid, i just wanted games, shows, movies and music without having to pay for it, as i would not be able to afford it all. First movies from P2P-clients like napster, kazaa and limewire. My older brother taught me what i needed to know to get started with torrenting later, and i built up a great ratio on 3-4 private trackers to get what i needed. This continued until soptify and netflix came along and i had some more cash on hand. The initial service was good enough for me to stop pirating.

So after about a decade of being a landlubber, i started pirating again. The services are fragmented, they treat you like shit and using any of their services is a privacy nightmare. As this dawned on me, i regretted having ever stopped pirating, because now i barely had any stuff at all. I didnt own a thing, and i did not like it. So now i had to spend a lot of time building up a library from (almost) scratch. I have a jellyfin-server running at home with about 600 movies and some of my old favorite shows, while also picking up some of the new stuff that i want. I dont have to sit thru all the bullshit on netflix to find a show/movie i like anymore, and the experience is pure bliss in comparison. Still lacking a bit in the music department, but that is also growing and i again enjoy some of the music i listened to before that is not available on spotify. I dont exclusively pirate though, i purchase some music of bandcamp, games of gog (and steam) and audiobooks of libro.fm.

Next time there is an enticing offer that does not involve downloadable drm-free files, im not falling for it. Fool me once etc etc

Hotline for the MacOS warez scene to get games in high school (circa 1999ish).

It's all thanks to my older sister who pirated a lot of games for me including Garry's mod back in like 2007 or so. She introduced me to uTorrent (that app is shitty as of right now, use qbtorrent.) which i am pretty excited for. This is like when i was 7 (I am 25 years old now) and before the ISP restrictions in the US, we pirated all sorts of games, movies, etc. What my sister used to do is we rent movies from blockbuster and my sis used to rip the movie files from the DVD to a burnt DVD-R. We would do that every time we rent a movie that i've liked.

She used to pirate music too as well as pirate episodes of Supernatural before AT&T gave her a bullshit cease and desist letter to her. Afterwards, she stopped pirating media and it makes me sad to see this happen to her. Luckily, at least direct downloads are better than torrents nowadays.