Asklemmy

i hate capitalism

Games, no. Honestly, my limit at this stage of life is time and energy to play them. As a kid, I'd have boxes of pirate floppies and CDs.

I have Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime subscriptions. All three have taken a quality nosedive. Amazon shoves ads in, Disney gets little added apart from it's own releases, and Netflix struggles to get anything before the others.

I've recently started using the streaming pirate sites just because there's more choice. Not just for new movies, but things like Children of the Corn, or Timecop. Older stuff that really should be on one of those three services, but isn't.

It's become a service problem. Everyone wants to run their own streaming service, nobody really has the content to justify it, it's now even more fragmented than cable and satellite were.

They need to take a hint from the music industry. Every service there has just about everything.

I never pirated much, then I pretty much stopped when online services became usable and cost effective.

Now I really feel the urge to go back to pirating, services have become extremely fragmented and difficult to use. There are less shows/movies available than ever. And the cost is sky rocketing.

I justify it for these massive companies that have been making record profits for years, while the common person is struggling with energy crises, fuel price increases, lack of housing. And these Hollywood exces are chilling in their mansions and yachts.

I don't pirate games though, as I like them in my library, and they're not tied to a subscription or a shitty company like Amazon.

It's super interesting to me that piracy is generally considered immoral, but going to the library is considered pious. Obviously there's some differences with these things... But in general I find it incredibly frustrating and depressing that we have developed the tools to copy and share information pretty much instantaneously across the globe and that we have decided that this is a bad thing instead of a miracle. Obviously I still want people to be able to make things and make a living, but I wish we could find a better way to do this while providing access to more people. We can have kick-ass libraries with modern technology, but it's stunted for legal and capitalistic reasons... I'm not saying I have all of the answers, but I wish more people could at least recognize that as a shame.

I pay for things that are more convenient than piracy. Namely games and music.

EBooks and audiobooks are too expensive, the multitude of video services too inconvenient.

My actions sometimes result in massive corporations not maximizing their potential profit. I'm fine with it, capitalism gets all my money anyway.

Most of the time, I view piracy as a last resort. I'll try to legally obtain it, but there are circumstances when I do sail the seas:

1. Textbooks. This is a all around greedy industry preying on poor college students like me that barely pays the actual authors. They don't deserve my money, and I don't have much of it anyways.

2. Video games/books I already own. I already paid for it, so it's justifies to me.

3. Old video games that don't have a real platform that I emulate. I understand that I shouldn't pirate a 2021 video game, but a 2001 video game that I can't legally buy on PC/phone is a different matter.

4. Aforementioned skimming through books. I might buy it after doing that.

5. Music. Why? Half the stuff I listen to isn't even on Spotify or other streaming platforms. Additionally, I can manage my own library, listen offline without having to follow the whims of a streaming app, and even change the pitch and speed of the music!

I pirate movies because they split content into multiple streaming service with separate prices. And some of those are not available in my area.

I pay for music streaming because the service is easy, wherever you go, the content is almost the same, so you won't miss any content or if any it's minimal. It will just go down to what service preference you would like.

I pirated console games in the past before digital, because some of the games were not available in our area. Now it's easy to purchase so I wait for a sale and purchase.

I buy knockoff items if it's cheap and unimportant. I buy legit items if it's important and I need quality and after sales support.

my philosophy is that it's 1s and 0s and it's harming absolutely nothing.

companies push malignant restrictions all the time, geolocking being one of the grossest, drm, the no-screenshot thing, price increases, random rights bullshit, etc. pirating is simply better. better than buying the disc, even! [special features aside], you just get the file, no fuss, no case to put somewhere, no annoying menus, etc. unlike vinyl, having the disc doesn't really enhance the experience as much, i find.

Because streaming services are either slow at releasing new episode or the service isn't available at my region. (Restrictions they put themselves, not my countries government)

They don't want my money :(

If I don't have access to a paid version of it, I'll pirate it. It's not like you're losing a potential sale if I literally can't give you my money.

If I disagree with the ethics/philosophy of a company (i.e. Disney) I'll pirate it. They may make good movies but I'll not support them financially.

If it's too damn difficult to find an accessible version of it, I'll pirate it. I'm fine with paying for shit, but not spending an hour of my free time just trying to give you my money.

1. Yeah, sometimes.

2. I justify it if it's me getting free stuff from rich and greedy game dev companies, publishers, streaming services, large record companies, etcetera. They were never going to see my money anyways, so it's not like they are losing any money (despite the fact they claim that they lose money from people who were never gonna buy their products in the first place).

3. Again, they were never gonna see my money, so why should I care so long as I don't get caught? Hell, even if piracy somehow became impossible, they'd still never see my money. With music, it's more complicated since I usually just download songs off of YT to listen to on my phone or desktop.

Though, I will say that I will never buy into music streaming since I cannot say with certainty that whoever I'm listening to will get even a percent of a percent of a penny off me listening, while the service gets pretty much 100% of the profit and leaves the artists in the dust.

He usually doesn't like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it's the right move to pirate

Even if you paid for everything, most likely these professors are barely going to get anything out of it. They get into shitty contracts with big publishers. So unless they publish stuff on their own, you're not really helping them by buying their books. Oftentimes, you can just email the profs and they'll send you a free pdf of their stuff because they just want to get their ideas out there and don't care too much about the money.

If I can access ALL content from a provider for a reasonable monthly price then I'd happily do it.

But no, we can't have nice things. I'm watching a show and halfway through the show is removed. Now what? Well, you can now watch it from this other provider, just pay extra!

Fuck that.

I pirate cause I want free stuff. No need for me to try to justify it.

As a fledgeling author, I could only be so lucky and actually get my poor excuse for work pirated: free publicity and a sure way to reach another potential reader ~~market~~ public.

Yes I pirate everything.

I don't really understand the justification question. What is there to be justified? I'm not hurting or harming anyone.

Supporting content creators by paying for access is just idiocy.

It's a bit like disabling your ad blocker to pay content creators by viewing ads - happy to let idiots do that on my behalf.

I download ebooks that I already own the physical copy of. I pay for 4 (yes 4) streaming services. if a movie i want isnt on any of them, high seas. a few years ago things were better and i almost never had that situation come up, now it seems its every other movie either isnt on anything or on some niche service

It's capitalism, the free market at work.

I think copyrights are a heresy, a cancer for humanity. So I don't care about pirating.

But I don't pirate much these days because it became more difficult with torrent and I can easily pay for video games and support the studios I like.

Any case where I do pirate my philosophy is “Man I tried as hard as I could to give you guys money for this but you didn’t make any way for me to do so”

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 used to Pirate everything when I didn't have any money, once I started making some money I pirated the things that I didn't want to afford quite yet, these days I only pirate on occasion for testing things out before I buy them

My opinion on piracy is extremely dependent on what is being pirated.

Pirating a game published by EA, made by a studio that hasn't existed for twenty years? Go right ahead, the people that made the game won't see any money either way and EA fucked them over anyway.

Pirating a new game from an indie studio that is asking a fair price? Yeah that isn't cool imo.

No, I don't, because I can afford stuff and pirating in this situation would be just pure stealing which I believe is morally wrong. Yes, being a billionaire is usually morally wrong too but I don't think it just cancels out.

Justifying piracy by saying capitalism is bad sounds like a hypocrisy to me. You want to use something that exists thanks to capitalism without participating in it. You want to eat your cake and have it too.

Now, the case is different for people that can't afford stuff, especially when they genuinely need it (but I don't draw the line at entertainment, after all people NEED entertainment too). In that case, please pirate away. Everyone deserves a decent life. In general, I largely agree with OP's friend.

So let's say you want to buy a painting for your house. You've got a few options. You can go online, look at various items and choose to buy it. You could go to a gallery, look around and decide to buy whichever one suits you.

But crucially, you get to what you're buying before you commit to the ownership. You may not own the rights to the paintings (its probably a print), but you know what you're getting. Why would I pay for a movie if I don't know whether or not it's worth it.

Netflix, Hulu, amazon, etc. Are like galleries. They have an entrance fee and that's ok. But what most of them don't have anyway for me to actually buy a copy. Netflix movies require you to pay month over month to maintain access. So you are forever required to go to their gallery.

Like your friend, I'll pirate to watch a movie and if I like it, then I'll buy it. I try to buy physical discs, but they are becoming more and more rare. I pirate because I want ownership. Subscription models work because they are more convenient than physical purchases. But that convience is getting smaller every day.

There is a few reasons why I want physical copies. License deals expire and thus the content may disappear from the service it's on. My internet may be out. Yes, I can download, but that requires inconvenient forethought and you're always limited in the number of downloads and quality of those downloads. Having a large collection of movies in my home means I'm never without option.

Basically, I pirate because I'm not going to buy something that I don't know if I want it, and because I'm a doomsday prepper who has no other option 90% of the time.

I pirate things because crime rules. I stole a tiny pumpkin from a corn maze recently, that was cut into a THIN BLUE LINE ALL LIVES MATTER shape. Fuckem.

I pirate old stuff and overpriced stuff permanently. I refuse to pay an ebay seller $200 for an old GameCube game and I refuse to pay $700 dollars for all the Sims 4 dlc. You may also catch me pirating movies and shows as I strongly dislike subscription models.

Gabe newell once said “piracy is not a problem of price its a problem of service" after people kept pirating valve game titles. So he made sales more frequent and games cheaper. Piracy is usually frowned upon but it also teaches businesses what the customers don't like. AE like with adobe and there photo shop suite aswell as the newer unity game engine dispute. As a consumer I have no problem paying for a service unless it is inherently difficult to cancel as discussed by Louis rossman in mulitible videos aswell as company's nickle and diming the consumer.

In this post they asked what one considers ethical piracy, and this is how I commented:

Calling it ethical is a higher bar than calling it ethically acceptable. Ethically acceptable is a higher bar than practically acceptable.

If you are factually incapable of getting it otherwise, it is ethically acceptable. If, at the same time, you need the material, it is ethical.

Without the need and unavailability or unavailability, I would always be careful about calling it ethical - I would not call it ethical.

In those cases it is at least subjective and a weighing of various morals, costs, need or desire, and practicality. (By pirating you are a beneficiary without supporting the thing - which one should at least be aware of and weigh.)

I often don't consume what I don't deem a reasonable price for a reasonable offering. I occasionally (or maybe rarely?) buy music on Bandcamp because I can download and own it in high quality. For movies and series, there is no such thing, which is a requirement for me to pay. So I don't buy or rent individual movies and series at all. (Bundled streaming can be a reasonable offering. It's not about individual products then.) Overall I buy videogames for reasonable prices, to a higher degree than I play (or even can play) them. When it's a good or great price for something that interests me, looks good, and I want to support, I buy it. Software has many free and open source software available - so I don't see a need to anything in that regard.

There is no such thing as piracy (in this context). No such thing as "intellectual property". There are only copyright, trademark, and patent. And I violate them like a Thanksgiving Turkey.

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.

I pirate what I can't get by reasonable means within my boundaries.

I pay for three streaming providers constantly. If the one series I want to watch is on a fourth provider, they can fuck off and I'll just download it. Same if the offering gets moved out of a provider I use (because their license expired or whatever).

Games I typically don't pirate, since Steam is just too damn convenient. Epic Exclusives though... well, if possible I just avoid them.

Most books can be bought via Kindle store so that's also convenient and I just do that.

Music is basically close to equal on all streaming providers so I am mostly good with that. If something isn't I either buy them on beatport or just rip them off youtube (so pirate).

I basically live GabeN's theory: piracy is a service problem. Give to me without having to bend over and I gladly pay. Try to fuck with me and I shrug my shoulders and go elsewhere.

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

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 just pirate everything because it's easier.