Asklemmy

If its not multiplayer, why care.

I used to pirate anything. Music, movies, softwares, games...

Since I have a developer job and a stable income, I don't really pirate much stuff anymore, only movies and series, but then the whole piracy thing is not even illegal here where I live.

Maybe softwares, too, if I can't find any free and/or open source alternative of it.

For games and music, I like to pay, if I can. If it's expensive, I wait to some sale.

And also, with pirated stuff, you always end up something doesn't work or missing or you just have to make compromises. Fuck that, I'm too old for that.

One aspect of pirating is appealing to me tho - preservation. Anything you can't go and just buy because of dead services or just time going by needs to be preserved. It applies for hardwares, too. Liberating closed hardware and software is a noble thing in my eyes, and it justifies piracy.

i enjoy stealing

I regularly advocate for shows I pirate so I’m a walking ad for shows.

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 pirate almost all american media, movies, tv shows, games, etc because often there's no legal way to get it in my country until months after release, if at all. Which is bullshit considering it's japan, not some backwater 3rd world hell hole, so you'd think there'd be more options, but if it's not on Netflix or Disney+, you're shit outta luck.

I have no issue pirating:

• any content with massive profits
• any content made by a very rich entity
• any content where the artists, authors, creators, et al get a minority of the revenue (example: scientific journals, college textbooks). I always search for alternate methods of paying the artists directly if they exist.

I pirate. I don't justify pirating. I just do it, because I want things and have the ability to get them for free, so I do that.

I usually don't pirate, if something is overpriced then I'll wait until it's on sale. I have a set budget every month that I pay for entertainment, if something like a new video game is more expensive I'll just wait a month.

I'm especially against pirating products of asshole companies like Adobe. That's because even if you don't pay for them you're still popularizing their products, helping it stay an industry standard. I'm not in a profession where they're a necessity so I use their competitors like Affinity, which is good enough for my purposes, and I'm ok with supporting them.

I sometimes watch movies or series on non-legal streaming sites if they're not available elsewhere, but that's about it.

I want to support artists, but I will not pay for shit I've already pay for. I own an N64 and loads of games, I have the roms and will never pay a subscription to play worse versions in restricted conditions.

I will also not pay for the sports channels it is far too much. Where I am there are are like 3-4 different sports packages required to watch one league. Fuck that

Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I'm now at a point where money isn't as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.

There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren't being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.

i'm on basic welfare (400 dollars per month to afford everything i need) so yeah, i don't exactly have a choice..

When there's no legitimate way for me to rent something. I recently downloaded Joe vs the Volcano and Counterpart because there's no streaming service that has them on offer.

I need the definition of pirating since it always means something different to someone else.

If I stream movies and shows using my friends library am I pirating? What if I download a show from my friends library for later viewing for personal use, then delete it a week later since I don't need it? Let's assume my friends library was all purchased legitimatly.

Depends.

Sometimes I just can't find the actual thing by legal means. Go try listening to Bruce Woolley's version of "Video Killed The Radio Star" sometime. I can either try to hunt down a physical copy or I can just pirate it. See also: most video game soundtracks.

Usually though it's more about convenience. If I can just stream something on Spotify, I'll just do that.

If there's a movie I kinda wanna see but I'm not sure if it's going to be good I'll pirate it

My relevant philosophy, if that's the right word, is linked to on my Lemmy bio. Written more than a year ago, it's still defaulted to. Someone on Lemmy told me it's the most socialist-esque thing they've ever seen from me.

I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!

Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)

I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..

I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.

I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..

I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated

I tend to pirate and then buy later, when cheaper. Or for streaming services, I'll download a show as it airs but then purchase the service and background the series later to add viewership.

I think of it as time shifting the sale price.

I pirate a lot of movies and series and also a few books.

I also sometimes pirate games but not as often

I don't justify it. I think it's a bad thing but I like cheap.

If something is not for sale, I have no qualms about pirating it. Disney vault, abandonware, obsolete versions, etc.

I don't care about copyrights, and although I'd agree that I'm not entitled to someone else's work, I'll counterfeit it without a single qualm. I'm poor and would rather not have to choose between being well fed but bored as death, or hungry but entertained/educated. As much as possible, I try to support the little guys though; concretely, I'll eventually buy a game made by Octavi Navarro or Unspeakable Pixels, but Activision won't ever receive a kopeck from me.

I'm not the pirate I once was when it comes to gaming but there's always EGS exclusives, games whose lack of regional pricing make them impossible to reasonably buy here, things like that. I'm a patient gamer for the most part so most of the time I can just get it a few years down the line but sometimes even that doesn't cut it. I avoid doing it to indie developers, but those are usually the few that follow Steam's recommended pricing guidelines so they tend to be fine anyway.
I pirate unbelievable amounts of tv and movies on a regular basis though through the *arr apps and whatnot, mostly because I refuse to pay for a dozen different streaming services with their rotating content and usually terrible apps. I self host whatever I can to avoid relying on the whims of a few corporations, and the one surviving service so far is Spotify.

When i was younger, physical copies pf games and the used market were common things. Now pc games get no physical release, or if they do these are tied to steam or epic games, and consoles are pushing towards going all digital.

All while raising the prices even though there is no logistics involved anymore.

So i should pay more for something that i can't resell and can get taken away from me for one of several reasons (account gets banned, game gets delisted, service eol...)?

So that's why if it can get pirated, i will pirate it.

It's only piracy if you grab a cutlass and storm the local shops. It's time to call it what it is = digital theft / running unlicensed software / whatever. If someone hacks into your accounts, I doubt you'd call them a pirate for stealing all you personal videos and pictures, taking over your steam account, 'borrowing' your netflix, and so on. The whole thing is deeply uncool.

Personally I wish the laws would change to make copyright non-transferable from the original artists, who deserve reward for their efforts but shouldn't be a meal ticket for others. I'd also like to see abandonware legitimised - if folk can't buy it then it should be fair game.

I pirate media only, not games. Simply because I don't want to risk getting malware. Also too cheap to bother with streaming services; I want to own my media.